


A NEGLECTED 
ERA 





Glass JEJ^lTiG. 

Book BT 

Gopigte N?_ 



CDEmtGHT BEPSSOl 



A NEGLECTED ERA 




Palestine during the Greek and Roman Period 



A NEGLECTED ERA 



From the Old Testament to the New 



BY 

EDITH ROSS BRALEY 




NEW YORK 
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 Fifth Atehue 



Copyright, 1922, 
BY B. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 



All right* reserved 



FBINTXD IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMBBICA 



NOV 20 '22 

©CH680939 



.-,... e> t 



TO MY FORMER PASTOR 
PAUL DWIGHT MOODY 

THIS BOOK 
IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED 



PREFACE 

Several years ago, when I attempted to lead 
a group of women in the study of the period be- 
tween the Testaments, we found ourselves handi- 
capped by the want of an adequate textbook. 
The interest of the class was enthusiastic and the 
study seemed so well worth time and effort that 
at the request of the members of the class and 
other friends, I have ventured to assemble in one 
volume the information which made the period 
interesting and illuminating to us, and have 
dared to hope that it might be of use to other 
teachers and other classes. 

History, legend, and comment gleaned from 
the pages of the following works proved invalu- 
able assistance and I am much indebted to their 
authors : I wish also to acknowledge my indebt- 
edness to Rev. Paul D. Moody without whose 
encouragement and friendly criticism the book 
would never have been completed. 

History of the People of Israel, 

Carl Heinrich Cornill, Ph.D., D. D. 



PREFACE 

History of Israel, 

George Heinrich von Ewald. 

History of the Jewish Church, 
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D. D. 
Dean of Westminster 

The Jewish People in the Time of Christ. 
Emil Schurer. 

Historical Connection Between the Old and 
New Testaments, 
Principal J. Skinner, M. A., D. D. 

Life and Times of the Messiah, 
Alfred Edersheim, Ph.D., D. D. 

Hours with the Bible, 

John Cunningham Geikie, D. D., L.L.D. 

Life of Christ, 

Cannon F. W. Farrar, D. D., F. R. S. 

The Modern Reader's Bible, 

Richard G. Moulton, M. A., Ph.D. 

A Brief History of Our English Bible, 
Rev. Paul D. Moody. 

The Prophets as Statesmen and Preachers, 
Henry T. Fowler, Ph.D. 

Dictionary of the Bible, 
James Hastings, D. D. 

A Commentary on The Holy Bible, 
Rev. J. R. Dummelow, M. A. 



CONTENTS 

PACT 

Historical Introduction . i 

PART I. THE PERSIAN PERIOD 

538-333 B. C. 

OHAPTIE 

I. Ezra and Nehemiah 9 

The reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah. The foundation 
of legalism and exclusiveness. 

PART II. THE GREEK PERIOD 
333-i6o b. c. 

II. The Origin of Hellenism .... 25 
Alexander the Great's Conquest of Syria. First traces 
of Hellenism. Life and philosophy of Socrates. 

III. The Rule of the Ptolemies .... 37 

Jews in Alexandria. The synagogue and the yearly 
tribute. Power and character of the high priest. Lit- 
erary activity of the period. 

IV. The Persecution 50 

Palestine tributary to the Seleucids. Antiochus Epi- 
phanes. The persecution and the revolt under Matta- 
thias Maccabeus. 

V. Judas Maccabeus 66 

His remarkable victories. His rededication of the tem- 
ple. His defeat and death. His treaty with Rome. 

PART III. THE ROMAN PERIOD. 

l6o B. C.-70 A. D. 

VI. Judea an Independent Kingdom under 

THE ASMONEAN MONARCHS .... 89 
Jonathan and Simon Maccabeus. Treaty with Rome 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAOl 

renewed. John Hyrcanus. The Sadducees and the 
Pharisees. The Jews and the Samaritans. The de- 
cadence of the Asmonean monarch. 

VII. The Rival Claimants for the Jewish 

Throne 108 

Civil war between Hyrcanus and Aristobulus. The 
intervention of Pompey. Loss of Jewish independence. 

VIII. Herod the Great 123 

His early life. His appointment as King of the Jews 
by the Roman Senate. His marriage. Execution of 
his wife and children. Policy of his reign. His pub- 
lic works. The temple of Herod. 

PART IV. DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

IX. The Old Testament Canon and the 

Talmud 153 

X. School and Synagogue 165 

XL The Absurdities of Legalism . . .180 
XII. The Scribes, the Pharisees, the Sad- 
ducees AND THE ESSENES . . . . 1 96 

XIII. Hellenism and Judaism . . . . .213 

Hellenism in Palestine. Judaism in Alexandria. Aris- 
tobulus and Philo. 

XIV. The Jews and the Romans .... 230 
The sons of Herod the Great. Judea under Roman 
procurators. The war with Rome. The siege and 
destruction of Jerusalem. 

Appendix •• 257 

MAPS 

Palestine during the Greek and Roman 

Periods Frontispiece 

Jerusalem in the Roman Period . Facing Page 89 



HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 



HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 

When narrating his spiritual adventures in 
Grace Abounding, John Bunyan describes the 
mingled sensations of anxiety and peace brought 
to his orthodox soul by the perusal of lines for 
which he vainly sought between the covers of his 
Bible. "Look at the generations of old and see; 
did any ever trust in the Lord, and was con- 
founded?" "Then I continued," he says, "above 
a year and could not find the place; but at last, 
casting my eyes upon the Apocrypha books, I 
found it in the tenth verse of the second chapter 
of Ecclesiasticus. This at first did somewhat 
daunt me because it was not in those texts which 
we call holy or canonical. Yet as this sentence 
was the sum and substance of many of the 
promises, it was my duty to take comfort of it, 
and I bless God for that word, for it was of good 
to me. That word doth still oft-times shine 
before my face." 

The Bible student approaches the study of 
the four centuries of Jewish history immediately 
preceding the birth of Jesus Christ with al- 
ternate feelings of doubt and confidence not un- 

l 



2 A NEGLECTED ERA 

like those which John Bunyan experienced when 
he found his favorite text upon the pages of the 
Apocrypha. He is assailed by doubt because 
the Hebrew literature of the period was rejected 
by the makers of the Old Testament Canon 
as inferior from both a literary and spiritual 
point of view, and, with the exception of Daniel, 
Ecclesiastes, and a few psalms, assigned by mod- 
ern scholars to the Maccabean age, it has found 
no place in the Bible. This acknowledged infer- 
iority of Apocryphal literature, an expression 
of the moral decadence of the age in which it 
was written, is not reassuring to the seeker for 
mental and spiritual food, and he cannot fail to 
question whether with a wide field of Bible lit- 
erature open for exploration, his limited time 
should be spent in the study of a period when 
the voice of prophecy was silent and the Jewish 
people looked for God, not in the whispered 
warnings of the inner voice or the better im- 
pulses of the heart, but in the petty restrictions 
of an over-elaborated law and the wild and su- 
perstitious inventions of their Rabbis. Yet he 
may find restored confidence in the opinion of 
many wise men who believe that the criticism 
awakened by these "hidden" books might be 
applied with equal justice to certain portions of 
the accepted books of the Canon. Added re- 
assurance comes with an examination of the neg- 



HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 3 

lected literature, for even a desultory reading 
reveals the threads of gold which cross its soiled 
and blood-stained fabric; detached passages here 
and there of as fine a spiritual quality as that 
which shone upon John Bunyan's pathway, and 
stories of the wonderful faith and devotion of 
Jewish martyrs who lived and died for their re- 
ligion. 

But the chief benefit to be derived from the 
study of the Jewish history occurring between 
the Old and New Testament periods is the light 
which it sheds upon the conditions among which 
Christ lived and worked, and the Apocryphal 
books are valuable principally for the historical 
information which they contain concerning this 
period. During these intervening centuries, 
great changes took place in world-history. It 
witnessed events of no less importance than the 
fall of the Persian empire, the spread of Greek 
civilization in the Orient, and the subjugation 
of the great body of the nations by the Romans. 
Judaism could not emerge from four centuries 
of strife, persecution and contact with Greek 
and Roman civilization unchanged, and the Jews 
of the New Testament are in many respects a 
very different people from the Jews of the Old. 
Greek culture, with its double current of good 
and evil, entered the Orient with Alexander the 
Great, and in spite of the persecution and dread- 



4 A NEGLECTED ERA 

ful conflict occasioned by the intruder, Jewish 
civilization was permanently broadened and 
deepened by its pervasive influence. Roman 
despotism compressed to fanaticism the extrava- 
gant zeal of an already -bigoted people, and even 
the heavy hand of the mistress of the world 
could not prevent the disastrous outburst of 
their seething discontent. Greek philosophy and 
Roman law left their impress upon Jewish life 
and Jewish religion, but the most marked distinc- 
tion between the peoples of the two periods was 
produced by no outside force, but was inherent in 
the Jewish religion itself. This change was pro- 
duced by the growth of legalism and formalism. 
In the fifth century before Christ, the problem 
by which the leading men of the Jewish nation 
were confronted was : will Judaism have sufficient 
stamina to weather the disintegrating forces 
with which it must come in contact? With 
the future safety of their religion in mind, the 
Hebrew reformers of the period erected for its 
protection a cast-iron framework of law and 
form. So imposing and pretentious was the 
defence that it overshadowed and concealed the 
tender plant for whose protection it had been 
erected, and the nurture of that pure and spirit- 
ual religion preached by Isaiah and Jeremiah 
was neglected and forgotten, while the protect- 
ing framework became the object of most zeal- 



HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 5 

ous care. Storms of opposition and persecution 
served only to prove its temper and strengthen 
its persistency. Each succeeding generation con- 
tributed reinforcements and grotesque additions 
of complicated detail until the structure attained 
a size so monstrous and a shape of such bewil- 
dering intricacy that it would never have been 
recognized by its originators as the outcome of 
their comparatively modest foundation. With 
the tendency to make the shell of prime import- 
ance rather than the kernel which it contained, 
came the inevitable result, the substitution of the 
letter for the spirit of the law, of ritual for right- 
eousness. But, although externalism flourished 
and the religion of the changed heart became 
a dry and withered thing, the labors of those 
who built the artificial bulwark were not entirely 
vain, for beneath its shade in the time of Christ, 
there still survived the root from which Chris- 
tianity was to spring. By this root, Christianity 
and Judaism were so closely affiliated that 
but for its existence, the whole course of divine 
revelation must have run in a different channel. 
Subjected to the blessed influence of Christ's 
life and work, it became the most vital force for 
good which the world has ever known, and we 
owe its survival to that observance of law and 
form which bound the Jews so closely to their 
past and to each other. 



PART I 
THE PERSIAN PERIOD. 538—333 b. c. 



CHAPTER I 

EZRA AND NEHEMIAH 

Ezra and Nehemiah were the reformers who 
laid the corner-stone of legalism. Scripture tells 
us that Ezra was a priest of the house of Aaron 
and "a ready scribe in the law of Moses," that he 
had ''prepared his heart to seek the law of the 
Lord and to do it and to teach in Israel statutes 
and judgments," a description which combined 
with subsequent events, produces for us a mental 
picture of his early manhood, and we imagine 
him always poring over the sacred scrolls in the 
law school at Babylon, a stern and uncompromis- 
ing figure, the sharp angles of his asceticism still 
untouched by the friction of a pleasure-loving 
world. 

The narrative is silent concerning Nehemiah's 
parentage, and it is evident that his beauty and 
winning personality rather than his lineage had 
made him an inmate of the Persian court, 
where as the favorite of Artaxerxes and his 
queen, he had obtained the lucrative position of 
royal cup-bearer. Seldom have such unselfish 



10 THE PERSIAN PERIOD 

consecration, fiery enthusiasm, tireless energy, 
and patriotic persistency as Nehemiah's been em- 
bodied in one man, and to the gifts bestowed 
on him by nature were added the worldly wis- 
dom, the knowledge of men and affairs acquired 
in the Persian court. 

Probably two men more distinctly different in 
character and ability could not have been found 
among the prominent Jews of the Babylonian 
colony, yet because deep in the heart of both 
rested the same love and hate, hope and fear, 
they were destined to tread the same path and 
together to lift a heavy load of indifference 
and doubt from the hearts of their coun- 
trymen at Jerusalem, a burden which the 
very diversity of their attainments fitted them to 
share. 

Like all other Jewish patriots, they looked for 
that golden age long promised by their prophets, 
when the heathen nations by whom they had been 
persecuted and oppressed should bow in fear be- 
fore them; but they had witnessed the dissolution 
of many small nations upon return from cap- 
tivity, and they feared lest before the coming of 
that joyous day, the Jewish remnant, enfeebled 
by exile, might be utterly lost, merged in the ocean 
of heathendom by which it was tossed to and fro. 
The germ of Jewish individuality must be 
planted upon its native soil, nurtured, and above 



EZRA AND NEHEMIAH 11 

all, isolated and barricaded from entangling and 
destructive foreign influences. No sacrifices 
were too great or hardships too severe to be en- 
dured for the preservation of Jewish in- 
dividuality and Jewish religion, but the world- 
wide love of humanity preached by the great 
prophet of the exile was unknown to these Jewish 
reformers. With every faculty alert for the 
spiritual welfare of their countrymen, they were 
wholly deaf and blind to their heathen neighbors* 
need of Jehovah and hated them as fervently as 
they loved their God and their religion. 

Before Ezra and Nehemiah began their work, 
the discipline of the captivity had left its impress 
upon the Jewish people. Like children sur- 
feited with sweets, they no longer cared for 
idolatry when they were constantly surrounded 
by it, and after seventy years of captivity, be- 
came for all time a monotheistic people. Daily 
contact with the strength of their conquerers had 
convinced them of their own weakness, and the 
futility of political ambition for themselves. 
They renounced all thought of political indepen- 
dence and were content to exist as a religious sect, 
their one hope faithfulness to the God who in re- 
turn was to reward them with a great future. 

In B. C. 537, when Cyrus, wishing to protect 
his kingdoms against the hostility of Egypt by es- 
tablishing a friendly colony upon her northern 



12 THE PERSIAN PERIOD 

border, had given the captive Jews permission to 
return to their native land, many of them had re- 
covered from their first homesickness and pre- 
ferred the ease and prosperity of Babylon to the 
perils of the long journey to Jerusalem and the 
hardships of recolonizing a deserted land. In 
Babylon, they formed a community by them- 
selves, and wealth and comfort had led to the 
building up of a Jewish culture and learning which 
could not possibly have been developed in the 
struggling colony at Jerusalem. There, too, 
a school for the study of the Mosaic law had 
sprung into existence, the dynamo where a the- 
oretical Judaism was generated, the revivifying 
influence of which the Babylonian Jews longed 
to share with the colony at Jerusalem. 

The exiles who had braved the difficulties of 
the return found a desolate and ruined city over- 
run by hostile heathen tribes. The great stones 
and charred timbers which blocked the streets of 
Jerusalem must be removed, homes must be 
built, a scanty subsistence must be wrested from 
the unproductive soil, and at the same time, the 
frequent attacks of hostile neighbors must be met 
and parried. The enthusiasm of the colonists 
was so impaired by poverty and the hard work 
to which they were unaccustomed, that seven- 
teen years had passed before they attempted to 
rebuild their place of worship. Then under the 



EZRA AND NEHEMIAH 13 

leadership of Haggai and Zechariah, a plain 
temple with scanty furniture was erected to re- 
place the costly building of Solomon. The city 
was partially rebuilt, and life gradually became 
more normal. Goldsmiths, money-changers, 
and dealers in spice set up their booths in the 
streets; Tyrian fishermen came thither to find a 
market for their fish; and corn and fruit were 
borne on the backs of mules through the city; 
but the leveled walls, burned gates and clusters 
of ruined houses on the hill-sides were still re- 
minders of the former desolation. Jerusalem was 
still open and defenceless against attack, and the 
glorious prophecies of the return were still unful- 
filled. The bright hopes by which the colonists 
had been inspired faded into vague illusions; 
their own poverty and the comparative pros- 
perity of their Samaritan neighbors caused a dis- 
belief in the justice and goodness of God, and 
skepticism and indifference bcame prevalent. 
The paying of tithes was neglected, blemished 
animals were offered as sacrifices, Jewish wives 
were divorced and heathen women were installed 
in their places. 

The returned exiles were sadly in need of the 
restraint of a more stable government, and of 
the uplift and inspiration to be supplied by the 
coming of Ezra and Nehemiah. 

A correspondence as frequent as the scanty 



14 THE PERSIAN PERIOD 

means of communication would permit, was 
carried on between the two colonies, and in B. c. 
458, Ezra, bearing many costly gifts and a letter 
from Artaxerxes which gave him full authority 
to reform conditions in Judea, set out with seven 
hundred and seventy-two Jewish families to bring 
the message of the law to the colony at Jeru- 
salem. The journey was commenced in- April, 
but it was midsummer before the travellers 
reached their destination, where they were joy- 
ously received and sacrifices of thanksgiving were 
offered for their safe arrival. 

Ezra had not been long in Jerusalem when he 
discovered that many of its most prominent 
citizens, including priests and Levites, had 
married heathen wives, and that these strangers 
were admitted to the intimacy of family worship 
and entrusted with the important task of rearing 
half-Jewish children. Such a transgression of 
the Mosaic law had been unknown in Babylon, 
where the Jews had little or no social intercourse 
with their heathen neighbors, and Ezra's grief 
and repugnance knew no bounds. He tore his 
hair and beard, rent his inner and outer garment, 
and sat motionless all day in the court of the 
temple. We can easily imagine the prestige of 
this wealthy Babylonian Jew among the poverty- 
stricken colonists of Jerusalem, and the tremen- 
dous influence exerted by his public display of 



EZRA AND NEHEMIAH 15 

horror at their wickedness. The people gathered 
about him weeping, and when evening came, 
he began a long wailing speech, half-prayer, 
half-address, in which he attributed all the 
misfortunes and hardships of the past to 
their sin, and demanded not only the ob- 
servance of the Mosaic law which prohib- 
its marriage with foreigners, but added to it 
a requirement of his own, the immediate divorce- 
ment of all heathen wives. These strangers and 
their innocent children were to be turned adrift 
like Hagar and Ishmael, but without the loaf 
and water-skin, or the blessing of their husbands 
and fathers. The excitement which prevailed 
has been compared by Professor Cornill to the 
intense, but short-lived enthusiasm of a Metho- 
dist revival meeting. The people acknowledged 
their guilt and promised with fear and trembling 
to do all that Ezra desired, but when an assembly 
gathered three months later to consider the 
matter, the affair had assumed a different aspect. 
The claims of natural affection had reasserted 
themselves, and the prominent Jews who had 
married the daughters of native heathen magnates 
and Persian officials hesitated to incur the con- 
sequence of obeying Ezra's demands. They 
made excuses to delay the issue, pleading the in- 
clemency of the weather and the imprudence of 
deciding so important a matter in one day or 



16 THE PERSIAN PERIOD 

two, and finally insisting that the whole affair 
be placed in the hands of a committee. The 
committee was appointed, but it is evident that 
it accomplished little beyond obtaining the 
long list of names with which Ezra's narrative 
ends, and that the annals of the next thirteen years 
were suppressed to conceal his chagrin an f d dis- 
appointment. He vanishes from the record, and 
we can only conjecture that he rebuilt the walls of 
the city and that his work was destroyed by the 
foreign potentates to whom hfe attempted re- 
form had been most distasteful. 

In B. c. 444, a band of Jewish travellers 
brought the sad news of the overthrown walls 
and frequent murders which occurred in the 
roads about Jerusalem to Nehemiah at the 
Persian court. Overcome with grief and anxiety, 
he obtained a twelve years' leave of absence from 
Artaxerxes, who also made him governor of 
Judea and gave him full authority to rebuild the 
walls of Jerusalem. He set out at once with his 
"firman," his royal guard, and retinue of slaves, 
and only three or four days after his arrival at 
Jerusalem, began his work. Nehemiah evidently 
took the hearts of his countrymen by storm. 
They could no more withstand his enthusiasm 
and generosity than they could escape his 
thorough and systematic vigilance. Every class 
of society was obliged to take part in the work, 



EZRA AND NEHEMIAH 17 

and to each family was assigned the portion of 
the wall next its own dwelling. Thus every in- 
habitant might regard the part he had himself 
constructed as his own. 

Obstacles only stimulated the energy and per- 
sistency of the new governor. When Sanballat, 
the Horonite, and* Tobiah, the Ammonite, who 
had regarded the new-comer with envy and sus- 
picion since the first day of his arrival, annoyed 
the builders by their threats and cunning devices, 
Nehemiah bade each man wear a sword while he 
worked, and stationed a trumpeter at his own 
side that all might gather about him should the 
alarm sound to summon assistance. Many times 
the Samaritans endeavored to mislead and en- 
trap the resourceful governor, and each time he 
escaped, responding to their wily invitations with 
courteous sarcasm, telling them he was engaged in 
a great work which he was unable to leave. 

When the poor who had given up their 
daily means of subsistence that they might 
join in the work, were cheated and oppressed 
by the rich money lenders, Nehemiah put 
the usurers to shame by refusing to accept 
any salary, and kept open house, enter- 
taining one hundred and fifty guests at his own 
table daily, regaling them with dishes so choice 
that he dwells upon their enumeration with 
evident satisfaction. 



18 THE PERSIAN PERIOD 

Every day the builders labored from the rising 
of the sun till the stars appeared, and day and 
night, Nehemiah superintended the work, never 
once removing his clothes from the day the wall 
was commenced until the day of its completion. 
In spite of all hindrances, the work was accom- 
plished in fifty-two days, and its dedication was 
celebrated amidst great rejoicing. Two long 
processions including men, women and children 
marched to the sound of trumpet and song around 
the city on the top of the newly-made fortifi- 
cation, and "the joy of Jerusalem was heard even 
afar off." 

Faith and hope had been reawakened by de- 
votion and self-sacrifice; the time was now ripe 
for the work which Ezra had been compelled to 
drop; and, just here, when the services of an 
efficient scribe were indispensable to the progress 
of the reform, he reappears in the narrative. 
We do not know how his years of seclusion had 
been spent, but it is possible that he had been 
revising his code of laws to meet the needs of 
the colony at Jerusalem, and his severity had 
doubtless been softened by his recent failure. 
The people gathered by the water gate and 
begged him to read the commands of God from 
his sacred scrolls. It was early in the morning 
when he mounted the wooden pulpit which had 
been prepared for him there, and until noon a 



EZRA AND NEHEMIAH 19 

great congregation listened eagerly to his read- 
ing. In order that the law might be perfectly 
understood, Levites went to and fro among the 
assembled people, explaining each passage as 
soon as it had been read. When the members of 
the congregation wept because they had so often 
disobeyed the holy precepts, they were restrained 
by Ezra and Nehemiah, who told them it was 
not a time for mourning, but for rejoicing. 

A few days later the feast of tabernacles 
was celebrated as the law prescribed, and each 
day of the feast, Ezra read to the people from 
the holy books. The twenty-fourth day of the 
same month was appointed as a day of general 
confession and repentance, and a vow to obey 
the law was signed and sealed by the heads of 
families. In a written covenant, they promised 
to abstain forevermore from marriages with for- 
eigners, to observe the Sabbath and Sabbatical 
year, to pay tithes for the support of the temple 
worship, and to bring all the first fruits of their 
substance as an offering to the house of God. 

The day on which this first "great assembly" 
was held has most appropriately been called the 
birthday of Judaism, and its far-reaching sig- 
nificance cannot be over-estimated, for it was then 
that the customs peculiar to the Jewish religion 
first became integral parts of Jewish life. The 
Shemoneh Esreh or eighteen benedictions, the 



20 THE PERSIAN PERIOD 

prayer which at a later date every Jewish man, 
woman and child was compelled by the oral 
tradition to repeat three times a day, owed its 
origin to this first great assembly, and from the 
stress laid by Ezra and Nehemiah upon the im- 
portance of a thorough knowledge of the Mosaic 
law, sprang the synagogue, the "bearer and 
banner" of Judaism. The foundation for 
barriers far more effective than city walls was 
thus laid, and behind this solid wall of separation, 
the religion from which Christianity was to 
spring, was protected from dissolution. 

At first there was frequent backsliding, and 
during Nehemiah's absence in Persia, the law 
was boldly broken by those who should have been 
its most loyal supporters. Eliashib, the high 
priest, prepared a chamber for the Samaritan 
Tobiah within the precincts of the temple itself; 
the house of God was forsaken by the Levites 
and singers because tithes were no longer paid 
for their support; the Sabbath was desecrated, 
and mixed marriages were again contracted. 
Nehemiah's vigorous reforms on his return led 
to a further weeding out of the ranks. Tobiah's 
household furniture was ejected with violence 
from the temple, and the chamber was cleansed 
from the pollution of his contaminating presence. 
The gates of the city were closed at sunset on 
Friday, and until the evening of the following 



EZRA AND NEHEMIAH 21 

Saturday, no foreign merchant was allowed to 
bring his wares within or even to linger outside 
the walls. The offending husbands of foreign 
wives received drastic treatment from the ener- 
getic governor. He flew at them, cursed them, 
pulled their hair, and made them solemnly swear 
that their sons and daughters should not follow 
their example.* 

Manasseh, the son of the high priest Eliashib, 
was driven from the city because he had married 
Sanballat's daughter Nicaso, and would not give 
her up. With other discontented priests, he es- 
tablished a Samaritan worship, which led to the 
building of a rival temple on Mt. Gerizim where 
all who did not wish to keep the law established 
by Ezra and Nehemiah might worship God in the 
old-fashioned way. 

The record of Nehemiah's last reforms closes 
the account of his public works and, as his book 
marks the end of Old Testament History, 
we must now begin to grope our way through 
that period of darkness and obscurity which is 
lighted by the scanty records of the Apocrypha. 

* Dr. A. B. Davidson's summary of Ezra and Nehemiah 

characterizes the two men better than several pages of 

analysis and commentary. "Ezra tore his own hair, but 
Nehemiah tore the other fellow's hair." 



PART II 
THE GREEK PERIOD. 333—160 b. c. 



CHAPTER II 

THE ORIGIN OF HELLENISM 

An uneventful century of subjection to Persian 
rule, scarcely mentioned in Jewish annals, 
followed the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah. 
At its close, the calm was broken by a wave of 
excitement, and the eyes of not only the Jewish 
nation, but of all Syria and Egypt, were turned 
toward Alexander the Great as he played his 
brief but brilliant part in the drama of history. 
The picture engraved upon Jewish hearts and 
minds by Alexander's conquests in Syria is re- 
flected in the apocalyptic visions of Daniel, who 
beheld the youthful Macedonian as an Ionian 
goat leaping swiftly eastward with feet that 
hardly touched the ground, smiting with his one 
'notable' horn and trampling beneath his virile 
feet the two-horned ram, symbol of the united 
kingdom of the Medes and the Persians; thus 
establishing a kingdom "strong as iron, foras- 
much iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all 
things." 

In B. c. 333, the Persian empire was shattered 

25 



26 THE GREEK PERIOD 

by the Greek victory of Issus, and Alexander 
marched down through Syria demanding the oath 
of allegiance from Persian provinces, subduing 
them sometimes by force, more often by the 
magic of his name. As Greek histories contain 
no record of his conquest in Judea, it is probable 
that the Jews passively accepted their transfer 
from Persian to Greek dominance; but Jewish 
tradition, unwilling to accept so prosaic a version 
of its country's part in the important crisis, re- 
peats both in Josephus and in the Talmud a 
legendary account of the first meeting of Jew and 
Greek, which runs as follows: 

When all Syria was lurid with the horrors of 
the siege of Tyre, Alexander sent messengers to 
Judea and Samaria to claim substantial proofs 
of their friendship, reinforcements and arms; 
and the Jews refused to comply with his demand, 
declaring that they would be faithful to the 
Persian king as long as he lived, but the servile 
Samaritans willingly accepted the conqueror as 
their sovereign and sent seven thousand soldiers 
to join his army. Angered by the disobedience 
of the Jews, Alexander marched with his army 
toward Jerusalem, guided by the eager Samar- 
itans, who saw in the promised destruction of the 
holy city a long-sought revenge for Jewish 
insults. As they halted upon the heights of 
iMizpeh which overlook the city, a long pro- 



THE ORIGIN OF HELLENISM 27 

cession, clad in white, issued from its gates. It 
was led by Jaddua, the high priest, dressed in the 
purple and scarlet robes of his office and wearing 
upon his head the miter bearing the gold plate 
upon which the name of Jehovah was engraved. 
The formal march continued all night to the 
sound of clashing cymbals before the procession 
reached the height upon which the Greek army 
was stationed. While his soldiers waited for 
the command to fall upon the long white line 
and destroy it, Alexander, to their amazement 
alighted from his chariot, advanced alone, and 
fell upon his knees before the Jewish leader. 
When asked why he, whom all men adored, 
bowed before the high priest, he replied that he 
worshipped not Jaddua, but the one true God, 
whose name was inscribed upon the priestly 
miter, explaining to Parmenio, his favorite gen- 
eral, alone, that years before in Dios of Mace- 
donia, such a one in such a habit had appeared 
to him in a dream, foretelling his Persian and 
Egyptian victories, and urging him to cross the 
sea without delay. 

Led by the venerable high priest, the youthful 
king entered the holy city, where he offered a 
sacrifice in accordance with Jaddua's direction, 
and beheld upon the sacred records Daniel's 
prophecy of his wonderful career. So pleasing 
did he find this proof of Jewish wisdom, that he 



28 THE GREEK PERIOD 

willingly granted to the multitude, even to such 
as wished to join his army, the privilege of ob- 
serving the religious customs of their ancestors 
and freedom from tribute during the Sabbat- 
ical year, while the unfortunate Samaritan guides, 
delivered into the hands of their Jewish enemies, 
were fastened to the tails of horses and dragged 
through thorns and briars to the site of their 
temple on Mt. Gerizim. 

A few substantial grains of truth rest beneath 
the elaborate embroidery of this tale, highly 
colored as it is by Jewish prejudice, for history 
tells us that the Samaritans rebelled against the 
conqueror and that he added a part of their 
territory to Judea; but the Jews cherished his 
memory with such reverence that the names of 
Solomon and Alexander became synonymous. 
It is also probably true that Alexander, who be- 
lieved that God was the common father of all 
men, especially of the best men, worshipped the 
God of the Jews as he had worshipped the gods 
of other Syrian nations and granted the Israelites 
freedom from tribute during the Sabbatical year, 
hoping in this way to gain the deeper tribute 
which he most desired, the tribute of an admir- 
ation and affection which should find expression 
in the adoption of everything Greek. 

For his conception of conquest was as daring 
as his military feats. With his keen and gifted 



THE ORIGIN OF HELLENISM 29 

mind, he realized that a kingdom bound to- 
gether by force would not provide him with the 
memorial which he wished to leave in the Orient. 
He conceived the idea of a vast empire bound to- 
gether and controlled by a force more potent 
than the sword, the force of Greek civilization. 
The path of his army might be traced by 
Greek colonists who built cities with Greek names 
and Greek forms of government, by means of 
which he hoped to create on Syrian and Egyptian 
plains an atmosphere of Greek influence which 
should color and permeate Oriental life; to make 
the Greek language the medium of Oriental 
thought and to unite East and West in one great 
body, whose directing and inspiring spirit should 
be the culture of Greece. The character of this 
Greek influence which hand in hand with Alex- 
ander invaded the East, may be illumined by a 
backward glance at the philosophy of Socrates, 
in whose wisdom and nobility early Greek life 
found its climax. 

The son of Sophroniscus, a poor sculptor, 
Socrates owed his education to the generosity of 
one of his father's patrons. His early years 
were spent in his father's shop, in Greek schools 
of culture, and in the Greek army where he more 
than once displayed a courage which won the 
admiration of his fellow soldiers. His fascinat- 
ing conversation, not less than his bravery, made 



30 THE GREEK PERIOD 

him attractive to the young Athenians. Emerg- 
ing from the long reveries in which he indulged, 
and from which nothing could rouse him, he 
would hold the youthful Greek nobles spellbound 
by the witchery of his tongue, so that even the 
elegant Alcibiades feared he might sit down 
beside him and grow old while listening to his 
words. In personal appearance, he was almost 
repulsive. His capacious mind and lofty spirit 
were humbly housed in the droll and ungainly body 
of a clown, the ugliness of which he accentuated 
by going barefoot and by wearing, summer and 
winter, the same soiled and worn old cloak. He 
himself is said to have claimed that his turn-up 
nose, bristling hair, and thick and curling upper 
lip were beautiful, because they pointed upward. 
As his jocose and satirical manner veiled the seri- 
ous purpose of his teaching, so homely and prac- 
tical illustrations concealed from careless eyes the 
beauty of the truths he uttered. With way- 
ward passions and a high temper, but of an 
intensely religious nature, he listened ever 
to the divine voice or daimon, which he acknowl- 
edged as the guiding and restraining influence 
of his life, consulting it on all important 
occasions, and yielding implicit obedience to its 
whispered warnings. Guided by the divine voice, 
Socrates recognized in the declaration of the 
oracle of Delphi, who pronounced the son of 



THE ORIGIN OF HELLENISM 31 

Sophroniscus the wisest of Jiving men, a call 
to a life of unpaid and patient toil, and spent 
his middle and later years upon the streets 
of Athens, teaching young and old, and trying 
to rescue his native city from the materialism of 
the Sophists, who, thwarted in their speculations 
in regard to the origin of the universe, denied 
the existence of truth and found in the pursuit 
of wealth and pleasure the only goal of life. 
"Socrates instead of trying to account for the 
existence of the universe was ever craving for 
a light to show him his own path through it." 
He found the light he sought in the eternal reali- 
ties of the inner life, virtue, courage and knowl- 
edge, and became a moralist and missionary as 
well as a philosopher. Knowing the potency 
in the world of moral conduct of the never-end- 
ing train of thought which rushes constantly 
through the minds of men, he confined his specu- 
lation to the nature of thought and its propellent, 
knowledge. So while Ezra and Nehemiah were 
erecting barriers to exclude all harmful foreign 
substances from the stream of Jewish life, Socra- 
tes, in Athens, was attempting to remove the mud 
and slime of ignorance from the source of the 
6tream of life, believing that thought, clarified 
and rendered active by accurate knowledge, would 
swiftly find an outlet in virtue and good conduct. 
For his philosophy made virtue and knowledge 



32 THE GREEK PERIOD 

inseparable; for example, it was his conviction 
that a knowledge of the evil results of self-indul- 
gence would make men temperate, and that a 
knowledge of the immortality of the soul would 
lead men to endure all suffering and hardship 
of the body whose life is transient rather than 
mar the beauty of the spirit whose life is eternal. 
But men must do right because it was right, 
without thought of reward or punishment. He 
sought always to supply the wants of the soul 
rather than the wants of the body, and believed 
that the perception of outward justice, goodness 
and truth was dependent on the innate justice, 
goodness and truth of him who behefd. 

To convince men that they saw fundamental 
truths blurred and distorted through the defective 
window of their own ignorance, and to lead them 
to look at life through the pure crystal of perfect 
knowledge, he employed his famous method of 
cross-examination, discarding books as able 
neither to ask questions or argue. If a by- 
stander were so unfortunate as to consider 
his knowledge of any point infallible, Socrates, 
professing ignorance and with assumed innocence, 
asked him to define it, and soon pricked the 
bubble of his conceit by a series of clever ques- 
tions which rendered both answer and him who 
answered ridiculous. He himself claimed to 



THE ORIGIN OF HELLENISM 33 

be wise only in the knowledge of his own igno- 
rance. Know thyself and thy limitations, was 
the maxim of his teaching. 

But the eminent men whose ignorance' he most 
often exposed could not fail to resent his ridi- 
cule. As Kleine well says, wherever a great soul 
gives utterance to its thoughts, there also is 
Golgotha. He was accused of introducing new 
gods and of corrupting the Athenian youth, was 
tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. The 
severity of his sentence might have been miti- 
gated, had he taken advantage of the privilege 
which Athenian law gave the accused, and sug- 
gested some lesser penalty like exile or imprison- 
ment; but, with characteristic audacity, he de- 
clared that a public maintenance in the Prytaneum 
would be his most appropriate punishment, thus 
claiming the honor conferred only upon 
Athens* most distinguished citizens. The fol- 
lowing extract from the defence of Socrates tells 
of a life lived in consistence with the principles 
he professed: 

"Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but 
I shall obey God rather than you, and while I 
have life and strength I shall never cease from 
the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhort- 
ing anyone whom I meet after my manner and 
convincing him, saying: 'O, my friend, why do 



34 THE GREEK PERIOD 

you who are a citizen of the great and mighty 
and wise city of Athens, care so much about 
laying up the greatest amount of money and 
honor and reputation and so little about wisdom 
and truth and the greatest improvement of the 
soul which you never regard or heed at all?' 

"And this I should say to everyone whom I 
meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but 
especially to the citizens, inasmuch as they are 
my brethern. For this is the command of God 
as I would have you know, and I believe that to 
this day no greater good has ever happened in 
the State than my service to God. For if you 
kill me, you will not easily find another like me, 
who, if I may use such a ludicrous figure of speech, 
am a sort of gadfly given to the State by God, 
and the state is like a great and noble steed who 
is tardy in his motions, owing to his very size, 
and requires to be stirred into life. I am that 
gadfly which God has given to the State, and 
all day long and in all places, am always fastening 
upon you, arousing and persuading and reproach- 
ing you." 

Socrates' last hours were spent in prison, 
where he delivered marvellous addresses to his 
friends upon the immortality of the soul. Sur- 
rounded by his weeping disciples, he drank the 
fatal cup of hemlock with a smile, and cheer- 



THE ORIGIN OF HELLENISM 35 

fully awaited his passage to that unknown world 
in which he confidently believed. 

"Speak, History! Who are life's victors? Unroll 

thy long annals and say 
Are they those whom the world called the victors — 

who won the success of a day? 
The martyrs or Nero ? The Spartans who fell at 

Thermopylae's tryst 
Or the Persians and Xerxes? His judges or Socrates? 

Pilate or Christ?" 

The impulse given to ethical speculation by 
Socrates found a vent in the schools of Plato 
and Aristotle, but he effected no permanent re- 
form and none of his followers reached his moral 
height. The path pointed out by him was too 
stern and steep for the feet of his laughter- 
worshipping, sun-loving countrymen; and many 
of them found an excuse for self-indulgence in the 
vague and elastic doctrine of Epicurus which 
excused men from all moral responsibility and 
taught them to find in the pursuit of pleasure 
and avoidance of pain the chief end of life. 

Spoiled by prosperity and enervated by 
Oriental luxury, Alexander the Great himself, 
although trained in his youth to self-restraint and 
endurance by his tutor, Aristotle, succumbed in 
later life to Epicureanism. He died the victim 
of his own uncontrolled passions at the age of thir- 



36 THE GREEK PERIOD 

ty-three, and his body was borne from Babylon to 
its last resting-place at Alexandria. He is well 
characterized by Pope as the youth who all things 
save himself subdued. 



CHAPTER III 

THE RULE OF THE PTOLEMIES 

The great empire of Alexander fell with the 
hand that had created it, and the four parts into 
which it was broken became the possession not 
of the best, as he had wished, but of the strongest 
who survived him. Syria was seized by Seleucus, 
and Egypt by Ptolemy Lagus, a general in Alex- 
ander's army; Palestine occupying an important 
and exposed position between the two great 
powers, not unlike that of Belgium in the recent 
European war, was the coveted possession of 
both. For twenty years it was the bone of con- 
tention over which the greedy Ptolemies and 
Seleucids wrangled, but the year B. c. 301, 
when it became the undisputed property oFEgypt, 
marked the beginning of one of the most peaceful 
and prosperous eras of its existence. 

The new Greco-Macedonian rulers granted 
the Jews especial favors, partly on account of 
their important political position and partly 
because they were superior, both in culture and 
stability of character, to the other small nations 
of Syria and Egypt. Jews settling in Alexandria 

37 



38 THE GREEK PERIOD 

were granted "isopolity" or rights of citizen- 
ship equal to those enjoyed by the Greeks and 
Macedonians; and Hebrews colonists in Antioch, 
the new capital of Syria, were accorded the same 
privilege. In Antioch, a payment of oil went 
with this right of citizenship, but as the Jews 
refused to accept it on account of the heathen 
rites used in its preparation, its value was made 
up to them in money. 

Attracted by commercial advantages, and the 
friendly disposition of the new sovereigns, 
Jewish pioneers were soon living side by side 
with Greeks in the cities founded by Alexander, 
and the fusion of which he had dreamed was 
gradually taking place. Among these cities, 
the one which bore the name of its founder and 
followed in its outline the shape of his military 
cloak, became the most important meeting-place 
of Greek and Jewish civilization. When Alex- 
andria was founded, the Jews were invited or 
commanded to colonize there, and in the war 
which followed Alexander's death, the citizens 
of Jerusalem were carried in a body to Egypt as 
the prisoners of Ptolemy Lagus. Many other 
Jews attracted by the fertility of the soil, mi- 
grated thither, so that from the very first, a large 
proportion of the population of Alexandria was 
Jewish. Although these Alexandrian Jews 
formed a community by themselves in the eastern 



THE RULE OF THE PTOLEMIES 39 

part of the city, they constantly met the Greeks 
upon an equal footing and needed all the restrain- 
ing influence of the exclusiveness promoted by 
Ezra and Nehemiah to protect them from the fas- 
cination of that whirlpool of Greek life upon 
whose brink they now found themselves. The 
peaceful character of the Ptolemean period 
afforded ample opportunity for the pursuit of the 
gentler arts, and Alexandria became the rival of 
Athens as a center of Greek fashion and Greek 
learning. Fortunately for the Jews, the Ptolemies 
were wise and good rulers and cultivated only 
the better part of Hellenism, for Greece had long 
since passed her prime and was now fast approach- 
ing an inglorious old age. The fair structure of 
her civilization rested upon worthless and 
crumbling foundations, and her culture was only 
a veneer which covered the grossest immorality 
and depravity. "With the intellectual perfec- 
tion went hand in hand a moral decay whose 
dreadful depths could not be hidden even by 
the roses which bloomed on the edge of the abyss." 
The rigidity and repression of Judaism to which 
the Hebrews were accustomed made the joyous 
grace and freedom of Greek life all the more 
alluring. Many of them adopted Greek man- 
ners and customs with the Greek language; and, 
as moral conduct had for hundreds of years 
been the center around which Jewish wisdom 



40 THE GREEK PERIOD 

had revolved, the more thoughtful Jews became 
deeply interested in the speculation of Greek 
philosophy. 

While Hellenism was becoming the opponent 
of legalism in Alexandria, Judea remained almost 
exclusively Jewish; but even into this center of 
Judaism, although its doors were ostensibly as 
tightly closed as ever to foreign influence, 
Greek customs and a knowledge of the Greek 
language had entered with the Jewish traders 
who came and went among the chain of Greek 
cities by which their territory was encircled. 

Jewish religion, however, was so ingrained 
a part of Jewish nature that although it might 
be broadened and illumined by contact with 
Hellenism, it was in small danger of being com- 
pletely swept away by it. The Jews, scattered 
throughout Syria and Egypt, far from the temple 
worship which had filled so large a place in their 
lives, soon built meeting-houses or synagogues 
where they met twice on Sabbaths and once or 
twice on week days to pray and to listen to the 
reading and explanation of the sacred books. 
In conducting these services of the synagogue, 
the Jewish emigrants were quite independent, 
but gifts and sacrifices could be offered only 
at Jerusalem, and the yearly temple tribute re- 
quired from all male Jews over twenty years of 
age was a tie which bound them to their mother 



THE RULE OF THE PTOLEMIES 41 

church. Offices for the collection of such dues 
were established in nearly every town, and men 
of good character were chosen yearly to make 
a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and place the money 
in the hands of the high priest. As the number 
of Jews living abroad was constantly increasing, 
the revenue thus collected must have been very 
large. The enriched treasury of the temple became 
tempting booty for heathen plunderers, and the 
importance of the high priest was materially 
increased by the large sum of money thus placed 
in his charge. 

During the reign of the Ptolemies, the high 
priest was not only the custodian of the temple 
tribute, but collected and was held responsible 
for the annual tribute which Palestine paid to 
the Egyptian government. When he became in 
this way the secular and financial head of the 
nation as well as its religious leader, his power 
was almost unlimited and his importance in the 
community can hardly be exaggerated.* All 
the records indicate that the high priests upon 
whose shoulders rested so heavy a weight of 
responsibility were wholly unworthy of the trust 
committed to their charge, and that "graft" 
was well known even in the third century b. C. 

* Associated with the high priest was the gerousiaor Su- 
preme Council of Elders, which afterwards developed into the 
Sanhedrin. The date of its origin is unknown, but it is first 
mentioned in the reign of Antiochus the Great, about 202 B. c. 
(Jos. Ant. XII, iii, 3.) 



42 THE GREEK PERIOD 

Josephus recounts the energetic measures prac- 
ticed by Ptolemy Euergetes to recover the yearly 
tribute of twenty talents, all of which had been 
incautiously appropriated by the high priest 
Onias, and also mentions the enormous fortunes 
which Onias' successors made by farming the 
revenues they collected. While the religious 
leaders of the children of Israel were engrossed 
in these absorbing financial adventures, the 
candlestick at the entrance of the temple often 
went out from lack of care, and huge piles of 
wood were insufficient to preserve the fire on 
the sacred altar, although formerly two faggots 
a day had kept it constant. 

A gratifying account in Ecclesiasticus of the 
high priest Simon, proves that among these coun- 
terfeit Jewish shepherds, there was one whose 
genuine and unselfish life restored the ancient 
honor of his office and rekindled with the sacred 
fire of the altar, the devotion of the children 
of Israel. "It was he that took thought for his 
people that they should not fall, and fortified the 
city against besieging." He left a permanent 
record of his public spirit in the new and substan- 
tial foundation of the temple which he built and 
in the city walls with which he replaced those 
torn down by Ptolemy Lagus. All the flowers 
of Oriental rhetoric were hardly adequate to 
express the admiration of the author of 



THE RULE OF THE PTOLEMIES 43 

Ecclesiasticus for this contemporary of his. As 
the morning-star in the midst of a cloud, as lilies 
at the waterspring, or as the sun shining forth 
upon the temple of the Most High, so he appeared 
when the people gathered about him as he came 
forth from the Holy of Holies. The eulogy 
is concluded by a beautiful description of the 
temple service conducted by Simon. It is quoted 
here as an expression of the ardent affection felt 
by pious Israelites for the courts of Jehovah. 

"When he took up the robe of glory 
And put on the perfection of exultation 
In the ascent of the holy altar 
He made glorious the precinct of the sanctuary. 
When he took portions out of the priests' hands 
And stood by the edge of the altar 
His brethren as a garland about him, 
He was as a young cedar in Lebanon, 
And as stems of palm trees, compassed they him round 
about, 

"And all the sons of Aaron were in their glory and the 
oblation of the Lord was in their hands 

Before all the congregation of Israel. 

And finishing the service at the altars 

That he might adorn the offering of the Most High, 
the Almighty, 

He stretched out his hand to the cup 

And poured of the blood of the grape; 

He poured out at the foot of the altar 

A sweet smelling savour unto the Most High, the King 
of all. 



44 THE GREEK PERIOD 

Then shouted the sons of Aaron, 

They sounded the trumpets of beaten work, 

They made a great noise to be heard, 

For a remembrance before the Most H5gh. 

Then all the people together hasted 

And fell down upon the earth on their faces 

To worship their God, the Almighty God Most High. 

The singers also praised him with their voices, 

In the whole house there was made sweet melody. 

And the people besought the Lord Most High 

In prayer before him that is merciful 

Till the worship of the Lord should be ended. 

"And so they accomplished his service. 

Then he went down and lifted up his hands 

Over the whole congregation of the children of Israel 

To give blessing to the Lord with his lips 

And to glory in His name. 

And he bowed himself down in worship a second time 

To declare the blessing from the Most High." 

The book of Ecclesiasticus which contains the 
passage just quoted was a part of the Septuagint, 
the translation of the Jewish scriptures into 
Greek. This version of the Hebrew Bible, 
which was the most important product of the 
literary activity of the age, was probably written 
to meet the needs of Alexandrian Jews who no 
longer spoke their native tongue ; but the following 
account of its origin given by Josephus, is in 
many respects not at all improbable. Ptolemy 
Philadelphus wished to procure, among other 



THE RULE OF THE PTOLEMIES 45 

literary treasures, a copy of the Jewish law for 
his great library at Alexandria. He therefore 
sent messengers to the high priest at Jerusalem 
to ask for a copy of the sacred books, and with 
it, Jewish sages who should convert it into a form 
intelligible to his countrymen. Flattered by 
the request of the king and the costly presents 
which accompanied it, the high priest selected 
seventy-two men, six from each tribe, and des- 
patched them with a magnificent copy of the 
Jewish scriptures to Alexandria where they were 
royally received and given seats at the king's own 
table. Their wisdom was tested by puzzling 
questions and their marvellous answers were the 
wonder and admiration of the Greek courtiers. 
After this public display of learning, they with- 
drew to the Island of Pharos that they might 
pursue their labors undisturbed. Thirty-six 
half-ruined cells are said to have been pointed 
out to later generations as the scene of the trans- 
lation where, according to Alexandrian tradition, 
the seventy-two translators, confined in pairs, 
all produced in seventy-two days, exactly the same 
inspired version without one single error or 
omission. The translation must, in reality, have 
been the work of at least two centuries and of 
several groups of translators, but it is quite 
possible that the translation of the Pentateuch 
may have taken place in Alexandria at the insti- 



46 THE GREEK PERIOD 

gation of Ptolemy Philadelphia. The produc- 
tion of the Septuagint, which was the Bible used 
for centuries not only by the Jews, but also by 
Christ and the early Christian church, is one of 
the most momentous events of the history of this 
intermediate period. It contained, in addition 
to the books of the Old Testament, the 
Apocryphal or "hidden" books which were denied 
entrance to later versions. 

Two of these Apocryphal books, Ecclesiasticus 
and the Wisdom of Solomon, together with the 
canonical book of Ecclesiastes, are interesting to 
the student of the period as records of the im- 
press of Hellenism upon their respective authors. 

Ecclesiasticus was written in Palestine by 
Jesus, the son of Sirach, and was revised and 
translated into Greek by his grandson during the 
reign of Ptolemy Euergetes. It combines shrewd 
worldly wisdom with unworldly piety, and has 
been well-described by a modern author as the 
sanctification of common sense. Directions for 
behaviour under all circumstances are found 
upon its pages, from the most primitive and 
homely rules in regard to table manners to subtle 
and artistic essays on such subjects as the futility 
of dreams and the superiority of the man of 
learning to the man of affairs. The garb in 
which the author's thought is clothed is half- 
Greek, half-Hebrew, and certain figures of speech 



THE RULE OF THE PTOLEMIES 47 

indicate a familiarity with Homer and other 
Greek authors; but it is evident that his 
inner life was undisturbed by Hellenism, for the 
spirit of the book is plainly Hebrew. "All 
wisdom cometh from the Lord" and is embodied 
in the law of Moses. Virtue is rewarded by 
prosperity and wickedness punished by adversity 
during this earthly life, and there is no certainty 
of a life beyond the grave. 

Certain passages suggest that Ecclesiasticus 
was read and studied by Christ and his disciples. 
The dissertation of St. James on the use of the 
tongue contains many thoughts similar to those 
of Jesus, the son of Sirach, on the same subject, 
and Ecc. xxviii; 1-3, u Forgive thy neighbor the 
hurt he hath done thee; and then thy sins shall 
be pardoned when thou prayest. Man cher- 
isheth anger against man; and doth he seek heal- 
ing from God?" cannot fail to recall one of the 
noble utterances in the Sermon on the Mount. * 

The simple melody of Hebrew faith produces 
harsh discords in the mind of the author of Ec- 
clesiastea, when combined with the refrain of the 
less happy phases of Greek philosophy. He 
can see no divinely ordered progress in life, but 
only a weary round of meaningless events wretch- 
edly limited by the grave. Yet he looks back 
upon the faith of his childhood as the one sun- 

* Material taken from Moulton's Modern Reader's Bible. 



48 THE GREEK PERIOD 

lit spot in the dreary landscape of his existence, 
and clings to the old belief in God and duty as 
an indispensable but inadequate refuge from the 
storms of pessimism and scepticism into which 
he has drifted. The book was probably written 
by an Alexandrian Jew about B.C. 200, but in ac- 
cordance with the Greek etiquette of the period 
which forbade an author to claim the honor of 
his own work, was ascribed to its hero Solomon. 
Hellenism and Judaism move in ideal and har- 
monious union across the pages of the Apocry- 
phal Wisdom of Solomon. The Alexandrian 
Jew who was its author, standing on the border 
line between Hebrew religion and Greek philos- 
ophy, partook freely of the best fruits of both, 
especially of those Platonic writings inspired by 
the almost Christian life and death of Socrates. 
He sees the guiding hand of a loving heavenly 
Father in the history of his people and finds in 
the Greek conception of immortality, the solu- 
tion of all the woes and mysteries of this earthly 
life. Ancient Hebrew wisdom is personified 
by him and becomes, like the Greek logos or 
word of St. John, the medium through which God 
reveals himself to men. Ewald asserts that 
"in the deep glow which, with all its apparent 
tranquillity, streams through its veins, we have 
a premonition of John; and in its conception of 
heathenism, a preparation for Paul, like a warm 



THE RULE OF THE PTOLEMIES 49 

rustle of spring, ere the time is fully come." 
And Gladstone sees in it the forerunner of true 
religion "which alone can flourish, not by a 
policy of isolation, but by filling itself with a 
humane and genial warmth." 

In the case of each one of these three authors 
whose contact with Hellenism may have been typ- 
ical of the wider experience of their race, Juda- 
ism, nourished from infancy upon the wholesome 
moral food of the ten Mosaic Commandments, 
had sufficient stamina to imbibe the rather dan- 
gerous tonic of Greek culture without succumb- 
ing to the poison -of its skepticism and immor- 
ality. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PERSECUTION 

The friendly relations between Egypt and Pal- 
estine were severed by the worthlessness and 
degeneracy of Ptolemy IV and when, at his 
death, his kingdom was left in the helpless 
hands of his five-year-old son, the Jews willingly 
joined Antiochus (III) the Great, in his efforts 
to make Palestine a part of his own kingdom 
of Syria. The Egyptian regent appealed to 
Rome for aid, placing the young king under her 
guardianship, but Rome was too busily engaged 
in war with Hannibal to interfere in behalf of 
her infant ward. Antiochus took advantage of 
the prevailing confusion to snatch the prize 
long coveted by Syria, and in B.C. 198, Palestine 
became once again a province of the northern 
kingdom. The Syrian king who was eager to 
retain both the territory and friendship of his 
new subjects, granted them even greater privi- 
leges than they had enjoyed under the Ptolemies. 

The expenses of the temple service were to 
be borne by the Syrian government, and the 

50 



THE PERSECUTION 51 

temple and everything connected with it was 
rendered non-taxable; foreigners were excluded 
from the temple and unclean animals from the 
city; Jewish slaves were liberated; the citizens 
of Jerusalem and all who should become citizens 
within a certain period of time were granted 
freedom from taxation for three years, anci 
after that, were to pay only two-thirds of the 
alloted tax. 

The overwhelming kindness and generosity 
of the Syrian king proved most favorable to trie 
growth of Hellenism in Judea, not the nobler 
Hellenism which had prevailed in Alexandria, 
but the corrupt Hellenism of Antioch in all its 
luxury and vanity. The baser elements of the 
Greek life thus introduced developed rapidly, 
even among the priests, many of whom longed 
to be freed from the irksome restraint of the 
law; and Judaism, at last assailed at its very 
heart, might have shared the fate of other 
oriental religions and have been altogether ob- 
literated or so saturated with Greek culture as 
to lose its true essence had the Jews not been 
roused to consciousness by the accession to the 
Syrian throne of that 'vile person of fierce coun- 
tenance, understanding dark sentences, and full 
of marvellous words' portrayed in the visions of 
Daniel — Antiochus Epiphanes, fche Nero of 
Jewish History. 



52 THE GREEK PERIOD 

Antiochus Epiphanes was of dual nature, 
extravagantly cruel and inconsistently kind by 
turns, a weather-vane blown to and fro by the 
powerful breezes of his own erratic impulses. 
The most arbitrary of Eastern despots, infur- 
iated by any opposition to his imperious will, 
he at the same time affected a spectacular friend- 
ship and familiarity with the common people, 
chatting and carousing with anyone whom he 
might chance to meet, bestowing costly presents 
upon complete strangers, and indulging in the 
most unkingly and undignified escapades. He 
dispersed parties of young merry-makers, rush- 
ing in upon them with bag-pipe and horn; he 
poured the perfume prepared for his own bath 
upon the unsuspecting head of a visitor at the 
public bath-house, and then joined the other 
bathers in their rough scramble for a portion of 
the precious ointment. His incongruous de- 
light in kingly splendor and fantastic pranks 
reached its height in a brilliant pageant, which 
he had prepared to rival in magnificence the 
triumphal processions of Rome, and in which 
he himself assumed the role of chief mounte- 
bank and clown, riding in and out upon a common 
work-horse. Public opinion generously excused 
him from all responsibility for his eccentric con- 
duct by changing his surname, Epiphanes, bril- 
liant, to Epimanes, mad, and was probably cor- 



THE PERSECUTION 53 

rect in assuming that the strange extremes to 
which he rushed were the emanations of a bril- 
liant but disordered and unbalanced mind. He 
displayed much ability in enlarging and rebuild- 
ing Antioch, and in the energy and resource 
with which he pursued his ambition to make the 
power and glory of Syria equal to that of Rome, 
where he had spent his youth as a hostage. 
The startling and the sensational, lavish sacri- 
fices, splendid gifts, and magnificent buildings 
were his delight. 

In the depleted national treasury which Anti- 
ochus inherited along with the Syrian throne, 
we catch a first glimpse of the shadow of that 
iron hand whose relentless grasp was to become 
the terror of the Orient; for Rome, returning 
from war with Philip of Macedon, had de- 
manded an explanation of Syria's treatment of 
her Egyptian ward and had enforced her demand 
with the sword. The enervated Seleucids were 
no match for the stern and hardy Romans. 
They were easily defeated in the battle of Mag- 
nesia and the price paid by Syria for Palestine 
was an almost impossible military tax of twelve 
years' duration. 

To meet the exorbitant demands of Rome, the 
Syrian kings rifled the treasuries of the heathen 
temples scattered throughout their territory and 
in the reign of Seleucus IV, the elder brother and 



54 THE GREEK PERIOD 

predecessor of Antiochus Epiphanes, an attack 
was made upon the treasury of the Jewish temple. 
The panic occurring in Jerusalem, when Heli- 
odorus, the king's tax collector, entered the 
temple and demanded the sacred treasure from 
the high priest, is vividly portrayed in Second 
Maccabees. The matrons, girt with sack cloth, 
rushed distracted through the streets of the city, 
while the maidens peered anxiously from doors 
and windows; the priests wearing their robes of 
office lay prostrate before the temple altar, and 
the high priest was in an agony of grief and ap- 
prehension. All Jerusalem bowed in prayer, im- 
ploring the mercy and protection of Almighty 
God. The prayer of the grief-stricken city was 
answered by the apparition at the temple treasury 
of three angel warriors before whose terrific on- 
slaught the unfeeling Heliodorus fell, like a leaf 
in the wind, to the pavement. He was borne 
from the temple on a litter by his terrified attend- 
ants and was recalled from death only by the 
prayers of the blameless high-priest Onias. 

Our matter-of-fact twentieth century minds 
might suggest as an interpretation of this won- 
drous tale that the divinely inspired faith, cour- 
age, and determination of the good and faithful 
Onias were the celestial champions that saved 
the treasure of the sanctuary from Heliodorus 
and his robber band; for Onias, like his father 



THE PERSECUTION 55 

and predecessor, Simon II, was unswerving in his 
loyalty to his religion, and his devotion to the 
duties of his holy office. When the faith of his 
contemporaries grew dim or failed, he was still 
a bright and shining light to his generation. He 
became later the leader of the faithful or pious 
Jews while his younger brother Jason led the 
'Hellenists. 

Syria's attempt to deprive the Jewish temple 
of its gold caused a sharp division between the 
Hellenists and the Jews who adhered to their 
native customs and retained the use of their 
native language, a breach which was widened by 
the entrance of Antiochus Epiphanes upon his 
career as king of Syria, for that irresponsible 
monarch was impelled by some wayward wind of 
fancy to desire the complete Hellenization of the 
unfortunate Jews. The two spurs by which he 
was driven to a constantly increasing activity in 
carrying out his policy were his urgent need of 
money and the treachery of two Jewish priests 
of the Hellenist party, described in the pungent 
language of Second Maccabees as "Jason, that 
ungodly wretch and no high-priest' ' and Mene- 
laus, "having the fury of a cruel tyrant and the 
rage of a wild beast." 

The high-priesthood, in accordance with the 
established custom of the Syrian government, was 
sold by Antiochus to the highest bidder and was 



56 THE GREEK PERIOD 

obtained by Jason, who not only promised the 
king a large sum of money, but cunningly begged 
permission to enroll his fellow-citizens as Anti- 
ocheans and to erect a gymnasium in Jerusalem 
where he might instruct the Jewish youth in 
Greek customs. Under Jason's leadership, the 
work of Hellenization was carried on with vigor 
and success. The courts of the temple were for- 
saken and the new Greek gymnasium was 
thronged with Jewish youth, who engaged daily 
in the games of the palaestra, shocking Jewish 
modesty by their Greek attire. Even the priests 
neglected the duties of their office and rushed 
from the temple to the gymnasium when they 
heard the signal for throwing the quoit which 
marked the beginning of the games. With 
an elasticity of religious belief which be- 
lied his Jewish origin, Jason even went so 
far as to send a sacrifice to the quad- 
rennial feast of Hercules at Tyre; but 
the messengers entrusted with the offering found 
their mission so distasteful that at their request, 
the money for the sacrifice was used instead for 
the building of triremes. 

Jason's career as high priest had lasted only 
three years when he was superseded by a rival 
Hellenist, Menelaus, who obtained the coveted 
office by out-bidding all opponents, but was al- 
most immediately deposed by Antiochus because 



THE PERSECUTION 57 

he was unable to pay the enormous sum of money 
he had promised. Fortunately for Menelaus, 
Antiochus was called in haste to war in Egypt. 
In his absence, the renegade priest bribed the 
king's deputy with golden vessels stolen from the 
temple, executed everyone who placed an obstacle 
in his devious path, and reinstated himself in 
office. 

Among his victims was Onias, the leader of the 
faithful, who fearlessly denounced Menelaus for 
his shameless use of the consecrated gold and fted 
to the temple of Daphne from the violence which 
was sure to follow. He was dragged from this 
place of refuge and murdered by hired assassins 
with a brutality which excited indignation of both 
the Hellenists and the faithful.* Even the in- 
consistent Antiochus is said to have shed bitter 
tears on hearing of the result of his own wicked- 
ness. 

Two years later, in B. c. 170, Jason, encour- 
aged by a false report of the absent king's death, 
made an attempt to regain the office from which 

*The murdered Onias III left a son, Onias IV, who sought 
refuge from the persecution in the Court of Ptolemy Philometor. 
There he conceived the idea of transferring the center of the 
imperilled national religion to Egypt and, about 160 B. c, 
obtained permission from Ptolemy to build a temple resembling 
the one at Jerusalem in the district of Helioplis near the city 
of Leontoplis. The new temple, since it checked the flow of 
Jewish tribute money to Palestine, received the favor and pro- 
tection of Egyptian sovereigns; and although Leontopolis was 
but a feeble rival to Jerusalem, the Egytian Jews maintained 
public worship there until the time of Christ. 



58 THE GREEK PERIOD 

he had been deposed. Gathering a force of a 
thousand men, he made a large breach in the 
walls of Jerusalem, through which he entered the 
city, shedding much blood and temporarily captur- 
ing Menelaus. He was unable to gain a per- 
manent victory and was driven forth from his 
native land never to return. After a life of 
much adventure, he died a fugitive in Sparta 
and he that "had cast out many unburied, had 
none to mourn for him nor any solemn funeral 
at all nor sepulcher with his fathers." 

Antiochus, returning in a bad humor from 
Egypt, where his plans had been completely frus- 
trated, chose to interpret this act of Jason's as a 
Jewish rebellion against himself. Menelaus was 
more firmly established in his favor than ever 
and his accumulated wrath descended upon the 
heads of the innocent Jews. At his command, a 
terrible massacre took place in Jerusalem. 
Thousands of Jewish citizens were cut down in 
the streets or driven to the house-tops only to 
meet with the same fate; but sadder to loyal 
Jews than the loss of homes or loved ones was 
the intrusion of the heathen king, guided by the 
traitorous Menelaus, into the innermost recess of 
their cherished temple where he helped himself 
freely to the great wealth which had been saved 
from the robber Heliodorus. All the cherished 
articles of temple furniture which the wealthy 



THE PERSECUTION 59 

Babylonian Jews had sent to Jerusalem by Ezra, 
the golden candlestick, the golden altar, and the 
table for consecrated bread, were carried away to 
Antioch, the golden candlestick which had lighted 
the entrance to the temple with its perpetual 
flame falling to the lot of the hated Menelaus. 

For two years there was rest from persecution. 
Then Antiochus again returned from the south 
where he had been compelled by the ultimatum 
of Rome to give up once for all his plans for the 
occupation of Egypt, and once again the unfor- 
tunate Jews must bear the heat of his baffled rage. 
His undivided attention was now turned toward 
the Hellenization of Palestine. A massacre 
even worse than that which had preceded it was 
conducted by Apollonius, the Syrian tax collector, 
who under pretense of peace, quietly entered 
Jerusalem upon the Sabbath day. Men were 
slain in the temple and synagogue, and women 
and children dragged from the sanctuary to the 
slave-market. The walls of the city, which had 
been built and preserved with care, were levelled 
to the ground. The houses were plundered 
and many of them burned. There was yet a 
third massacre and captivity, and the hill on 
which the ancient palace of David had stood was 
fortified and transformed into a Syrian garrison, 
a heathen monster in stone, it seemed to the un- 
happy Jews, looking grimly down in perpetual 



60 THE GREEK PERIOD 

enmity upon the temple and the half-ruined build- 
ings which surrounded it. 

On the twenty-fifth of October, B. c. 168, the 
obsession of Antiochus found vent in the mad de- 
cree by which the Jews, with the religious fervor 
of generations of ancestors flowing in their veins 
and the impress of centuries of religious training 
engraved upon their hearts, were to be trans- 
formed at a single stroke, into unstable and pagan 
Greeks. All were to be one people and every- 
one was to be subject tcfthe same law. The law 
was thoroughly and systematically executed by a 
king's commissioner appointed for that purpose. 
Assisted by minor officers, he erected in every 
town and city of Judea altars upon which the 
Jews were compelled to offer sacrifices to heathen 
gods and, on the king's birthday, to taste the un- 
clean flesh of the sacrificial feast. All the sacred 
books which could be found were destroyed, and 
the observance of the Sabbath and the ancient rite 
of circumcision were forbidden upon pain of im- 
mediate death. Dignified Israelites were com- 
pelled to join in the revels of the feast of 
Bacchus, marching in the Bacchanalian pro- 
cession, their gray heads crowned with festal 
wreaths of ivy. The temple was formally dedi- 
cated to the Olympian Jupiter and profaned and 
desecrated in a way most heart-rending to the un- 
happy Hebrews. Its gates were burned, and 



THE PERSECUTION 61 

the partition which separated the inner and outer 
courts was broken down. An unkempt vege- 
tation, beneath the shade of which the rites of 
Daphne took place in all their licentiousness, 
was allowed to spring up in the hitherto well-kept 
precincts. As a crowning insult, a herd of swine 
was slaughtered within the sacred enclosures. 
Their blood was sprinkled upon the sacrificial 
altar and the Holy of Holies, and the sacred 
scrolls were soiled and defaced with broth made 
from the unclean flesh. 

Nothing could have been a better antidote for 
Hellenism than the hateful and premature meas- 
ures by which Antiochus sought to force it into ex- 
istence. The sharp blows of the persecution 
roused the Jewish nation from its lethargy. The 
more timid submitted in terror, but many clung to 
their faith with a wealth of love and devotion 
which fully atoned for the poverty of their ideals 
and their conception of the God for whom 
they suffered. Ezra and Nehemiah might have 
been well satisfied with the result of their work if 
they could have seen men die willingly rather than 
transgress one petty detail of the law which they 
had established. The objects for which men be- 
came martyrs, the distinctions of food, the ex- 
aggerated observance of the Sabbath and the 
Sabbatical year, the rite of circumcision, and the 
offering of sacrifice, were two centuries later cast 



62 THE GREEK PERIOD 

aside by the choicest spirits of the Christian 
church as out-grown and worthless superficial- 
ities; yet to the noble martyrs of the Maccabean 
period, each separate issue was a glowing coal in 
the living fire of spiritual freedom, and, as such, 
must be carefully cherished lest the great whole 
be extinguished and lost. 

"O God of life and truth, give us a dream to fight for! 
Love, honor, faith, to suffer and to die for! 
For whenever men die for a cause, mistaken or not, • 
Misled or not, there truth advances an imperceptible de- 
gree." 

The spirit with which Jewish martyrs met 
their fate is preserved for us in the traditional 
accounts of Second Maccabees. Two women 
who had circumcised their infants in spite of the 
king's edict, were cast headlong from the walls of 
Jerusalem after being subjected in the streets of 
the city to the derisive scorn of their persecutors. 

Eleazar, an aged scribe, steadfastly refused to 
eat swine's flesh or to deceive his tormentors by 
substituting lawful meat for the forbidden food. 
He died the death of a martyr, saying with his 
last breath, "I will show myself such an one as my 
age requireth, and leave a notable example to 
such as be young to die willingly and courage- 
ously for the holy laws." 

Most heroic of all was that mother of seven 
sons who after witnessing the torture and death 



THE PERSECUTION 63 

of her six boys, still exhorted the seventh to be 
loyal to his God, making this brave, but pathetic 
plea. "O, my son, have pity upon me that bare 
thee and nourished thee and brought thee 
up unto this age and endured the troubles 
of education. I beseech thee, my son, 
look upon the heaven and earth and all that 
is therein and consider that God made them of 
things that were not and so was mankind made 
likewise. Fear not this tormentor but, being wor- 
thy of thy brethren, take thy death, that I may 
receive thee again in mercy with thy brethren." 
The young man met his death in a manner be- 
fitting the son of such a mother, and she herself 
last of all received a martyr's crown.* 

At last the long pent-up grief and rage of the 
Jewish people burst forth with a volcanic strength. 
A venerable priest, Mattathias of the house of 
Asmon, who with his five stalwart sons had taken 
refuge from the terrors of the persecution in his 
ancestral town of Modin, was the first to rebel. 
When commanded to take part in the monthly 
sacrifice ordered by the king, he replied with 
spirit: "Though all the nations that are under the 
king's domain obey and fall away everyone from 
the religion of their fathers and give consent to 

*The book of Daniel, in the opinion of modern scholars, was 
written during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes to encourage 
the Jews to remain constant to their religion throughout the 
horrors of the persecution. 



64 THE GREEK PERIOD 

his commandments, yet will I and my sons and 
my brethren walk in the covenant of our fathers. 
We will not hearken to the king's words to go 
from our religion either on the right hand or the 
left." 

A disloyal Jew came forward to obey the re- 
quest of the king's commissioner. At the sight, 
Mattathias' anger blazed. He fell upon the 
traitor and killed him; then slaying the king's 
officer and overturning the heathen altar, he fled 
with his sons to the mountains crying, "Who- 
soever is zealous of the law and maintaineth the 
covenant, let him follow me." There with a 
constantly increasing band of followers, they lived 
in a state of open rebellion, observing their re- 
ligious customs and making raids into the sur- 
rounding country, destroying Greek altars and 
circumcising uncircumcised children. The lime- 
stone caves of the desert furnished them shelter, 
and roots and herbs a scanty subsistence. 

When a band of Jewish fugitives was attacked 
by the Syrians and a thousand were slain because 
they would not fight on the Sabbath, Mattathias 
with impatient scorn for such short-sighted main- 
tenance of the letter of the law, decided for him- 
self and his followers, "Whosoever shall come to 
make battle with us on the Sabbath day, we will 
fight against him; neither will we die all as our 



THE PERSECUTION 65 

brethren that were murdered in the secret 
places." 

The great effort of rallying his down-trodden 
countrymen was a severe strain on the failing 
strength of Mattathias, who was now a very old 
man. He survived the hardships of life in the 
wilderness only a year, and died, committing the 
cause for which he had struggled bravely to the 
five sons who gathered about him to receive his 
blessing. With his last breath, he exhorted 
them to fight for the law and avenge their coun- 
try's wrongs, desiring for them no greater honor 
than the service and favor of God which had 
ever been the reward of the heroes of his race. 
He bade them make Simon their counsellor, 
and Judas, who was brave and strong, their 
leader in battle. 

The body of the aged priest was borne to the 
ancestral tomb at Modin where it was interred 
amidst the lamentations of all Israel. 



CHAPTER V 

JUDAS MACCABEUS 

Judas Maccabeus cheerfully accepted the for- 
lorn bequest of his aged father. Like a young 
lion, he fought the enemies of his religion and with 
gracious chivalry, he guarded the weak and timid 
of his race. In the four records of his prowess 
which have been handed down to us, the bright- 
ness of his fame is untarnished by mention of one 
dishonorable or disloyal deed. He stands pre- 
eminent among the heroes of his race for patriot- 
ism, courage, undaunted faith in God, and un- 
sullied purity of character, fighting always against 
tremendous odds, not for glory or renown, but 
for the favor of God and the religious liberty of 
his race. The following quotation from a 
modern English poet might well be applied to this 
warrior of ancient Israel. 

One who never turned his back 
But fought, breast forward; 
Never doubted clouds would break 
Never dreamed though right were worsted 
Wrong would triumph. 
66 



JUDAS MACCABEUS 67 

In accordance with the spirit of his age, he 
was a faithful friend, but a relentless enemy, ob- 
serving to the last letter the rough edict of the 
Jewish law, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a 
tooth." The successive and vigorous blows 
which he dealt the Syrians are suggested by his 
surname Maccabeus, the Hammer, which became 
later the name by which his entire family was 
best known. 

When the constant raids with which Judas, 
like his father, harassed the Greeks, killing the 
ungodly and burning their houses, grew too 
troublesome to be longer ignored, Apollonius, 
the governor of Samaria, marched against him 
with an army. He was met, apparently near 
Samaria, by Judas who slew him and with his 
handful of men, put the Samaritan army to flight. 
A trophy of his first victory, the captured sword 
of Apollonius with its jewelled hilt and blade of 
tempered Damascus steel, became the weapon 
with which the Jewish hero ever afterwards 
fought his battles for righteousness. 

During the same year, Seron, the commander 
of the Syrian forces in Palestine, attacked this 
young lion of the desert. The little band of 
faithful Jews, who had been all day without food, 
grew faint-hearted and despondent when they 
saw the large number and superior equipment of 
their opponents, but they were so re-animated by 



68 THE GREEK PERIOD 

the faith of their brave young commander, who 
assured them that with the God of heaven, it was 
all one to deliver with a great multitude or a 
small company, that again they carried all before 
them, and Seron and his army fled in disorder, 
to the land of the Philistines. 

All Palestine rang with reports of Judas' valor, 
and the Syrians began to realize that the Jewish 
insurrection was not a trivial affair to be lightly 
brushed aside. The angry king resolved to ex- 
terminate utterly this despised race which he had 
been unable either to bribe or to torture into sub- 
mission. He was himself obliged, on account 
of his pressing need of money, to go into 
Persia to collect tribute, but he left half his army 
with Lysias, a Syrian of high rank, whom he 
commanded to uproot and destroy all the Jews, 
to remove every vestige of Jewish occupation 
from Palestine, and to divide the lands of the 
Jews among aliens. Lysias gathered a large 
army, 40,000 footmen and 70,000 horsemen, if 
we may trust the somewhat questionable enumer- 
ation of First Maccabees, and sent it into Judea 
under the command of three noted Syrian 
generals, Ptolemy, Gorgias and Nicanor. So 
certain did the victory of the Syrian troops seem 
that they were followed by slave-dealers who had 
bargained with the Syrian leaders to exchange the 
large sums of gold and silver which they carried 



JUDAS MACCABEUS 69 

for captive Jews. The price had actually been 
agreed upon and the money thus obtained was to 
enrich the impoverished Syrian treasury. 

The Jews also made preparations for their 
desperate struggle for existence. Upon the 
heights of Mizpeh whence they could look down 
upon the forsaken streets of Jerusalem, the des- 
ecrated and insulted temple, and the menacing 
Syrian garrison, Judas assembled and organized 
his little force of three thousand men. In sack- 
cloth and ashes, they prayed and fasted, spreading 
out before themselves the cherished sacred em- 
blems which they could no longer use, the scrolls 
defaced by the Greeks with heathen images, the 
first fruits, the tithes, and the garments of the 
priests. They were so filled with holy zeal and 
burning indignation by this sad retrospection that 
Judas voiced the mind of all when he declared 
that it was far better for them to die in battle 
than to behold the calamities of their people and 
their sanctuary. He divided his army into 
companies commanded by his four brothers, and 
leaving only the timid and preoccupied behind* 
they marched down to encamp among the hills at 
the south of Emmaus. An attempt to surprise 
and destroy the Jewish army was made by five 
thousand Syrians under Gorgias; but Judas, who 
had been informed of their intention, quickly and 

* I Maccabees III, 56. 



70 THE GREEK PERIOD 

silently changed his position; and the Syrian gen- 
eral finding the Jewish camp deserted, spent the 
night and a part of the next day in a fruitless 
search among the mountains for the rebels whom 
he supposed had fled in fright. This division of 
the Syrian army was favorable to Judas' ill-armed 
and scanty troops, and they immediately pre- 
pared to surprise the Syrian camp. . After a 
stirring speech, in which their leader recalled the 
marvellous deliverances of the past, the trumpets 
sounded and the Jewish army fell upon the 
startled Syrians with such fury that again the 
result was a complete victory for the Jews. Three 
thousand Syrians were killed, and the living pur- 
sued to the plains of Gazera, Idumea, Azotus 
and Jamnia. 

But the second division of the Syrian army 
must be reckoned with before the Jews could 
safely secure the tempting plunder of the Syrian 
camp. When Gorgias and his men returned 
from their futile search, they found their tents in 
flames, and the Jews drawn up before them in 
battle-array. Always superstitious, they were 
filled with an unreasoning terror of this Jewish 
warrior who with his army seemed to bear a 
charmed existence, and like a herd of deer at the 
sight of the hunter, they fled without raising a 
weapon in self-defense. The victors returned 
homeward that night praising God in songs of 



JUDAS MACCABEUS 71 

thanksgiving, their dingy and ill-clad ranks 
brightened by the blue silk, the costly Tyrian 
purple, the shining shields and weapons of the 
Syrian camp, their hearts made glad by the pos- 
session of the gold and silver which was to have 
been the price of their freedom. 

A fourth victory won by Judas in an unequal 
conflict at Bethsura with Lysias himself so dis- 
comfited the Syrian leader that he withdrew to 
Antioch to collect a larger army; and the road 
which led to the goal of Jewish desire, Jerusalem 
and the deserted temple, lay open before the 
Jewish army. Led by Judas, they hastened 
thither, and their frantic grief at the sight of the 
overgrown courts and profaned altar of the 
sanctuary, whose well-kept precincts had hitherto 
been their pride, soon gave way to the quiet joy 
of the restoration. Priests of blameless life 
were chosen to remove everything which had 
been polluted by contact with the unclean animals : 
the heathen altars and pagan statues were ban- 
ished and the whole temple was thoroughly 
purged and renovated, while Judas and his sol- 
diers held the Syrian garrison at bay. 

A curious instance of the punctiliousness which 
characterized the period was the attitude of the 
puzzled priests toward the original altar of 
burnt sacrifice. After much consultation, it was 
decided that the stones which had been solemnly 



72 THE GREEK PERIOD 

consecrated, could not have been rendered wholly 
unclean by the recent pollution, and they were 
carefully laid away in an obscure corner of the 
temple until some prophet should come to impart 
to future generations the true secret of their 
proper disposal. 

The burned gates and broken partitions were 
rebuilt, and a new table, altar of incense, and iron 
candlestick encased in wood, replaced the costly 
furniture which had been carried away by 
Antiochus. Exactly three years from that 
twenty-fifth of December when heathen sacri- 
fices had first been offered in the Jewish temple 
by the king's commissioner, the front of the tem- 
ple was decked with the crowns and shields of 
gold which had been taken from the Syrians, the 
shew-bread was placed upon the table, the incense 
set smoking on the altar, and most significant of 
all, the perpetual light which symbolized the 
eternal radiance of the Spirit of God was relighted 
upon the sacred candlestick. Thousands of 
tapers supplemented the flame of the holy candle- 
stick and before their light, for eight days, the 
Jews celebrated the feast of the dedication, 
dancing and singing to the sound of the lute and 
the harp or marching in festive procession 
bearing the branches of palms and of evergreens. 
Costly sacrifices of thanksgiving were offered to 
God and the reaction which succeeded the intense 



JUDAS MACCABEUS 73 

grief of three years of hardship and persecution 
culminated in one of the most joyous occasions 
of Jewish history. The Feast of Lights or the 
winter Feast of Tabernacles which commemor- 
ated the rededication of the temple, became a 
regular festival of the Jewish church, and is still 
celebrated annually by the Jewish people. 

Notwithstanding the brilliant victories of the 
Jewish army, Judaism was still surrounded by 
enemies. As the Syrian garrison on the Mount 
of David was a constant menace to the safety 
of the restored temple, the temple mount, which 
later became one of the strongest garrisons in 
the world, was now for the first time converted 
into a rival stronghold by means of high walls 
and strong towers. Judas also established an 
outpost at Bethzur to protect the southern 
approach to Jerusalem. 

The Edomites on the south, the Moabites on 
the east, and the Greek colonies on the north and 
west of Judea, all of whom had joined the Syrians 
in their attempt to uproot Judaism and restore 
idol-worship, now manifested a jealous hatred 
of their victorious enemies by a bitter persecution 
of the Jewish immigrants who lived in their ter- 
ritories. In response to the pleas for relief 
from persecution which came to him from all 
directions, Judas divided his army, which now 
numbered eleven thousand men, between himself 



74 THE GREEK PERIOD 

and his brother Simon, and they went forth, Simon 
into Galilee and Judas and his younger brother 
Jonathan into Edom, Gilead, and Samaria. 
Everywhere they were successful, overpowering 
the idolaters, and bringing back with them to 
Jerusalem faithful Jews with their wives and 
children. 

In B. c. 164, while Judas was subduing the 
heathen nations of Palestine, Judaism was freed 
from its most vindictive enemy, for Antiochus 
Epiphanes, returning from an unsuccessful cam- 
paign in Persia, died of a loathsome and incurable 
disease. Jewish annals abound in legendary 
accounts of the humiliation and death-bed repent- 
ance of this eccentric monarch, but these traditions 
are so warped by Jewish prejudice that they 
cannot be considered authentic. 

The regency of the realm and the guardianship 
of the ten-year-old Antiochus Eupator were 
immediately seized by Lysias, although they had 
been bequeathed by the deceased king to his 
friend Philip; and the preoccupation of the 
Syrian magnates in their rivalry might have 
afforded Judea a long period of peace if Judas, 
no longer able to bear the irritating proximity of 
the Syrian garrison in Jerusalem, had not vigor- 
ously beseiged this obstacle in the path to Jewish 
freedom with batterings rams and engines. In 
spite of his vigilance, several of the beseiged 



JUDAS MACCABEUS 75 

Syrians, with certain Jewish sympathizers, 
escaped to Antioch and informed Lysias that 
matters in Judea would soon be beyond his con- 
trol unless the power of Judas was speedily cur- 
tailed. Lysias' answer was a visit to Judea with 
the young king and an enormous army. He 
approached Jerusalem from the south, attacking 
Bethzur so successfully that Judas was obliged 
to march from Jerusalem to the relief of the be- 
sieged fortress. The two armies met at Beth- 
zacharias. A military custom peculiar to the 
century was the use of elephants in battle, a prec- 
edent established by Alexander the Great him- 
self. The great beasts about which the Syrian 
forces were grouped, carried upon their backs 
strong wooden towers each occupied by ten or 
twelve Syrians of high rank. "And to the end 
that they might provoke the elephants to fight, 
they showed them the blood of grapes and mul- 
berries. " 

The angry elephants with their tall howdahs 
and dark Indian drivers, the hooked battle char- 
iots, the glistening spears and rattling armor of a 
hundred thousand Syrian soldiers spread over the 
hills and valleys south of Jerusalem in imposing 
and terrifying array. u Now when the sun shone 
upon the shields of gold and of brass, the moun- 
tains glistered therewith and shone like lamps of 
fire. Wherefore all that heard the voice of the 



76 THE GREEK PERIOD 

multitude and the marching of the company and 
the rattling of the arms were moved; for the 
army was very great and mighty." Nevertheless 
the Jews went boldly forth to meet this army 
which was ten times as great as their own and 
again distinguished themselves by remarkable 
acts of bravery. Eleazer, the fourth brother 
of Judas, performed the almost impossible feat 
of cutting his way through the Syrian ranks to 
the elephant upon which, from the great height 
of its wooden tower, he supposed the young king 
to be seated. He crept beneath the huge beast 
and killed it by an upward stroke of his sword, 
but was himself crushed and killed beneath the 
weight of the falling animal, thereby earning the 
title of Avaran or Beast-sticker, by which he was 
ever afterward remembered. 

In spite of the valor of his soldiers, it was 
soon evident that against such overpowering 
numbers, Judas must meet with his first defeat, 
and although the fact is only hinted at in First 
Maccabees and is openly denied in Second Mac- 
cabees, the Jewish army was completely routed, 
driven back into the temple fortress and there 
besieged. Owing to the rest of the Sabbatical 
year, there was a scarcity of food in the besieged 
city, and the Jews soon reached the point where 
they must choose- one of two alternatives, star- 
vation or surrender. At this juncture, Lysias 



JUDAS MACCABEUS 77 

was informed by messengers from Antioch that 
the regency had been usurped by his rival 
Philip. He was therefore obliged to bring his 
war with the Jews to a hasty conclusion. Mene- 
laus was beheaded as the prime mover in the 
whole vexatious affair, and a treaty in which 
the Jews were promised freedom to observe the 
laws of their ancestors ended the conflict for 
religious liberty. By a strange incongruity of 
fate, the achievement for which they had fought 
and struggled was consummated, not by one of 
their brilliant victories, but by their first defeat. 
There was no further attempt on the part of the 
Syrians to uproot and destroy Jewish institutions, 
and the "godly" were many of them satisfied to 
let matters rest there. 

But Judas and his followers could feel little 
confidence in a treaty of peace which was fol- 
lowed by a razing of the walls of Jerusalem to 
the ground and the retention of the Syrian gar- 
risons in Bethzur and Jerusalem. They had be- 
sides little appetite for subordination to Alcimus, 
a descendant of the house of Aaron who was 
leader of the Hellenists, and wished to become 
high priest. Constant friction occurred between 
the two parties in Jerusalem. 

Lysias, upon his return to Antioch, had con- 
quered Philip, but had been in turn conquered by 
a new claimant of the Syrian throne, Demetrius, 



78 THE GREEK PERIOD 

who beheaded the chancellor and the young king 
and took possession of the sovereignty. To 
the new king Demetrius, Alcimus made an appeal 
for aid, sending him costly gifts and the message 
that Judas was constantly inciting the Jews to re- 
bellion and that there could be no peace in the 
land while he lived. Nicanor, an experienced 
Syrian general, was accordingly sent with an 
army into Judea to subdue the Jews, kill Judas, 
and establish Alcimus as high priest. 

A picturesque touch is added to the conflict 
between Judas and Nicanor by the tradition that 
the rough Syrian general, since his first encounter 
with Judas at Emmaus, had entertained a lively 
admiration for the Jewish warrior, and upon 
meeting him face to face in Jerusalem had yielded 
completely to the charm of his impressive and 
high-minded personality. "He would not will- 
ingly have Judas out of his sight, for he loved 
the man from his heart. He prayed him also to 
take a wife and beget children." The account 
leads us to believe that the attraction was mutual, 
that Judas acted upon the advice of the Syrian 
general, and that for a year and a half, the two 
commanders lived in peace at Jerusalem, meeting 
daily, each enjoying the friendship of the other. 
Then Alcimus, in a message to Demetrius, de- 
nounced Nicanor as a traitor who plotted to 
make Judas ruler of Syria. Nicanor's friendship 



JUDAS MACCABEUS 79 

would not stand the strain of possible disaster to 
himself. Still he was reluctant to betray his 
comrade. When he received the royal edict 
which commanded him to send the Jewish com- 
mander as a prisoner to Antioch, •he became so 
churlish and ill-tempered that Judas, anticipat- 
ing evil, withdrew with his men from Jerusalem. 

In the search which followed Nicanor ap- 
peared before the temple court ordering the 
frightened priests to deliver Judas into his hands 
without delay. They swore they did not know 
the whereabouts of the man he sought, and tried 
in vain to appease his wrath by pointing out the 
sacrifice in honor of King Demetrius, which 
smoked upon the temple altar. By his irrever- 
ent mockery and blasphemous reply, the name of 
Nicanor was indelibly written upon Jewish 
memory long after the names of the' other 
heathen leaders in the Maccabean struggle had 
become faded and indistinct. "He stretched out 
his right hand toward the temple and made an 
oath in this manner: — 'If ye will not deliver 
me Judas as a prisoner, I will lay this temple of 
God even with the ground, and I will break down 
the altar, and erect a notable temple unto 
Bacchus." 

All the latent courage of the Jews was aroused 
by the threatened destruction of their cherished 
temple, of whose blessing they had recently 



80 THE GREEK PERIOD 

been deprived and for whose restoration Jewish 
blood had been freely shed. 

After a preliminary skirmish at Capharsalama, 
the rival forces met at Bethhoron where Judas 
had already gained one great victory and was 
now to gain his last. 

With the same cheerful confidence and faith in 
God which characterized his entire career, he en- 
couraged his men to meet that imposing array of 
angry elephants, glittering swords, and well- 
trained soldiers which had proved disastrous tc 
the Jews on the field of Bethzacharias. The 
Syrians entered the battle with trumpet and song, 
the Israelites with invocation and prayer. 
"Fighting with their hands and praying with 
their hearts," they encountered the great Syrian 
army, and their efforts were crowned with a vic- 
tory in which the hand of God was plainly visible. 
Nicanor was one of the first to fall and the loss 
of the Syrian commander occasioned the wild con- 
fusion in which his army fled. His dead body in 
its magnificant armor was carried with other 
spoil to Jerusalem, and the hand which had been 
raised insolently against the house of God was 
suspended over one of its gates. This entrance to 
the temple bore till the date of its destruction the 
name Nicanor's gate, and the day on which the 
victory took place was celebrated annually by the 
Jews as Nicanor's day. 



JUDAS MACCABEUS 81 

After the defeat of Nicanor, Judas stood at 
the head of the Jewish nation. He had become 
convinced that no dependence could be placed 
upon the promises of the Syrian authorities, and 
that the religious freedom of Israel would never 
be out of danger until it was guarded by an in- 
dependent Jewish government. 

Since her conflict with Antiochus the Great, 
Rome had watched the affairs of Syria with un- 
ceasing vigilance, constantly interfering with her 
colonial policy, ever ready to cripple her growing 
power. Reports of Rome's justice, her fidelity, 
her simplicity of life, her prowess in battle, and 
her wonderful military conquests had reached 
Judas through bis contact with the Syrians. He 
resolved to throw himself upon the mercy of 
Rome, and to beg her cooperation in making his 
nation politically independent, a project he dared 
not undertake alone. Ambassadors were sent by 
him to Rome to arrange an alliance, but they re- 
turned from their long journey too late. 

Two months after the battle of Bethhoron, 
Demetrius sent a vast army into Judea to avenge 
the defeat and death of Nicanor; and for some 
reason, possibly because of a sag in popular en- 
thusiasm, the reaction which might follow a great 
victory, more probably because his broader policy 
had antagonized the bigoted, Judas was unable to 
rally his scattered troops. Only eight hundred 



82 THE GREEK PERIOD 

men gathered to oppose the great Syrian army, 
and defeat seemed so certain that Judas was 
begged by his friends to seek safety in flight. 
"If our time be come, let us die manfully for our 
brethren, and let us not stain our honor," was his 
reply. He fought with his usual lion-like 
bravery, but was caught between the two wings 
of the Syrian army and fell. The body of this 
last great hero of the Jewish race was recovered 
by his two brothers, Simon and Jonathan, and was 
interred beside that of his father at Modin. 
The dirge which had been sung for David and 
Saul went up from all Judea, "How is the valiant 
man fallen, the savior of Israel." 

The six years which comprised the public career 
of Judas Maccabeus were crowded with acts of 
public service. He breathed into the hearts of 
his oppressed countrymen the reanimating spirit 
of his own courage and faith in God; he trans- 
formed a race of servile subordinates into a 
nation of brave and heroic soldiers ; he delivered 
his country from the heathen oppressor, estab- 
lished its religious liberty and sowed the seed 
from which soon after his death, political in- 
dependence was to spring. He destroyed with 
the sword the tangible debasing evidences of 
Hellenism, but was unable either to destroy or 
escape its subtle contagion. 

The martyrs of the Maccabean persecution 



JUDAS MACCABEUS 83 

who willingly gave their lives to resist the en- 
croachments of Greek influence, uttered with 
their last breath a belief in the doctrine of im- 
mortality which Hellenism had established in 
Judea, and an incident related in Second Macca- 
bees leads us to believe that the gloomy doubts 
of Jesus, the son of Sirach, in regard to the future 
life found no resting-place in the optimistic mind 
of Judas Maccabeus. When the Jewish hero, 
after a skirmish with the Syrians, returned to the 
battlefield to perform the last melancholy service 
for the dead, he found beneath the coat of each 
fallen comrade a small Philistine idol which had 
been worn as a talisman against disaster. The 
heart of Judas was saddened by the fear that 
this ''flicker of idolatry" might deprive his be- 
loved soldiers of the eternal bliss of a future ex- 
istence. With his living companions, he prayed 
earnestly that their sin might not be remembered 
by God, and also collected a generous sum in 
silver coins, which he sent as an offering to Jeru- 
salem to efface the memory of the idolatrous 
superstition and to insure the future happiness of 
these misguided souls. 

Everything indicates that the entire life and 
policy of Judas combined the nobler elements of 
both Judaism and Hellenism, and that he stood 
above that inescapable prison, the rut of legalism, 
which the stream of Pharisaic life, by its very ac- 



84 THE GREEK PERIOD 

tivity, was constantly wearing deeper and 
narrower. The fact that he chose the more 
open-minded of his countrymen to perform im- 
portant missions could not fail to irritate the 
pious, and it is a significant fact that his memory 
is ignored in the traditions of the Talmudic 
schools. His name does not occur once in the 
Mishna nor in the yearly thanksgiving which 
commemorates the deliverance from Antiochus. 
But if he was unappreciated by the religious 
leaders of his race, the adoration of the people 
was his, and posterity has given his name a high 
place among the military heroes of the world. 

"Spirit exalted! Above the armies of men in battle it 

hovers, valorous, undefiled; 
There, on the field of carnage and death, stand forth the 

highest instincts of the soul ; 
There find ye courage, strength, nobility, ungrudging 

service ; 
There find ye infinite tenderness and compassion, the 

generosity of worthy foemen; 
Just as, in the presence and hour of death, in the pain 

and sorrow, in the sharp arraignment, the veil 

harshly rent asunder, 
Man sees life's truth and falsehood, the spirit, love, and 

what it is really for; 
So, in the hour of war, nations awake and clear their 

eyes. 
Just as, out of trial, grief, adversity, sore loss, has come 

man's best endeavor; 



JUDAS MACCABEUS 85 

So, out of the world's distress, has come its highest 

dream. 
And here and there, on the crest of the years, one has 

appeared 
Sending his soul up like a sheet of flame, 
Lighting the sky with terrible glad truth, blinding the 

world, 
To show what man can be." 



PART III 
THE ROMAN PERIOD. 160 B.C.— 70 a.d. 





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Jerusalem in the Roman Period 



The Temple II. 

Castle of Antonia 12. 

Herod's Castle 13. 

Hippicus Tower 14. 

Mariamne Tower 15. 

Phasael Tower 16. 

Palace of Helena 17. 

The A era 18. 

Palace of Asmone- 10. 

ans 20. 
Council House 



Golden Gate 
Gate of Shushan 
Water Gate 
Gate of the Essenes 
Pottery Gate 
Valley Gate 
Gate of Ephraim 
Old or First Gate 
Gymnasium 
House of Caiaphas 



CHAPTER VI 

JUDEA AN INDEPENDENT KINGDOM UNDER 
THE ASMONEAN MONARCHS 

The ambassadors sent by Judas to Rome did 
not return until the hopes of the Maccabean 
party had been temporarily eclipsed by the de- 
feat and death of their brave commander, but 
the result of their long journey, a treaty which 
promised the aid and protection of Rome, was 
most significant in the history of the Jewish 
people. The bond which was to deliver them 
from the despotism of Syria became a century 
later the fetter by which they were held in help- 
less dependence at the feet of Rome and "from 
henceforth, for good or evil, the fortunes of the 
Jewish State were inextricably bound up with 
those of its gigantic ally — at first on terms of 
friendly equality, soon of complete dependence, 
then of violent conflict, finally of the most pro- 
found spiritual relations — each borrowing from 
each the peculiar polity, teaching, superstitions, 
vices and virtues of the other" and it was beneath 
the watchful surveillance of Rome that the events 

89 



90 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

which followed the disastrous defeat at Eleasa 
took place. 

The reins of government which had fallen from 
the hands of Judas were taken up by the Hellen- 
ist high priest, the hated Alcimus, and the army 
of Bacchides over-ran Judea. For a time it 
seemed as if the dark days of the persecution 
were to return. The righteous were hunted 
down and killed in such numbers that the sur- 
vivors, like their noble fathers, were obliged to 
seek refuge in the desert. But the years of val- 
iant military service through which Israel had 
just passed did not prove fruitless. With Jona- 
than, the younger brother of Judas, as their 
leader, they displayed such skill in guerilla war- 
fare that Bacchides could gain no permanent ad- 
vantage, and was obliged to content himself with 
placing Syrian garrisons in the principal cities of 
Judea and taking the children of prominent 
Jewish families as hostages to Jerusalem. 

Two years later, Alcimus intensified the al- 
ready active hatred of all orthodox Israelites by 
breaking down the partition which excluded Gen- 
tiles from the inner court of the temple; and a 
stroke of apoplexy in which his enemies beheld 
the retribution of God for this act of sacrilege, 
ended his career. No high priest was appointed 
to fill the vacant place, and Bacchides returned to 
Antioch. 



INDEPENDENCE OF JUDEA 91 

Jonathan evidently took advantage of the 
opportunity afforded by this clear field, for in 
B. C. 158, the Hellenists alarmed by his growing 
power, recalled Bacchides to Jerusalem. As the 
Syrian general was no match for Jonathan and 
his adherents, he executed the Hellenists who had 
sent for him, made a peace with the Hebrew 
leader upon his own terms, and left Judea never 
to return. 

The fog of obscurity in which the seven suc- 
ceeding years are enveloped, is pierced only by 
the light of one brief, but significant sentence 
found in First Maccabees. "Thus the sword 
ceased from Israel, but Jonathan dwelt at Mich- 
mash and began to govern the people; and he 
destroyed the ungodly men out of Israel." It is 
apparent that the following of Jonathan con- 
stantly increased, that he established a govern- 
ment at Michmash, and that although the Hellen- 
ists still held sway in Jerusalem, he became in 
fact, if not in name, the ruler of Judea. 

Jonathan was the politician and diplomat of 
the Maccabean family. Although wholly desti- 
tute of the lofty ideals and moral grandeur of 
his fallen brother, he was nevertheless able to 
perform important services for his country by 
his adroit use of Syria's waning power. With 
dogged persistence, he rose, step by step, some- 
times by force, sometimes by craft, to a place of 



92 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

commanding influence in Judea, lifting his nation 
with him to a position of almost complete inde- 
pendence. 

The aim of the Maccabean party was no longer 
religious liberty. It was the ambition of Jona- 
than to shake off the yoke of Syria, to win 
political freedom for his country, to enlarge its 
borders, and increase its strength. Ten years 
earlier, his hopes would have been futile, but now 
no Syrian king felt certain of his throne; Syria 
was crippled by internal strife, and the well- 
trained army of Jonathan must be either a menace 
or a crutch. Alexander Balas, the pretended son 
of Antiochus Epiphanes, disputed the claim of 
Demetrius to the throne. A similar rivalry was 
enacted between their sons, Antiochus VI and 
Demetrius II. All four were eager suppliants 
for the- friendship and aid of Jonathan. The 
rounds of the ladder upon which the wily Israelite 
rose to eminence, were the favors with which 
these aspirants for the Syrian throne purchased 
the friendship of the Jews. From Alexander 
Balas, who succeeded with his help, in dislodging 
Demetrius I, he obtained the title "king's friend," 
with the insignia which admitted him to the royal 
circle, the purple and the diadem. From the 
same hand, he received the office of high priest, 
which had by this time degenerated into an affair 
so purely political that the people were troubled 



INDEPENDENCE OF JUDEA 93 

by no sense of incongruity when, at the Feast of 
Tabernacles, the consecrated garments were 
hastily assumed by Jonathan, who, almost in the 
same breath, "gathered together forces and pro- 
vided much arms." 

By the winter of B. c. 142-143, Jonathan had 
played his game so well that he was the recognized 
ruler of Judea; three provinces of Samaria had 
been added to his territory; all the Syrian garri- 
sons except two, one at Gazara and the other oc- 
cupying the citadel at Jerusalem, had been re- 
moved and the warrior high priest and his brother 
Simon were loaded with honors by the Syrian 
king, Demetrius II. 

The envy and distrust of Trypho, the Syrian 
guardian of young Antiochus VI, brought the 
successful life of Jonathan to a violent close. 
He was told by the jealous Syrian, that in view of 
their close friendship, the maintenance of so 
large a Jewish army was quite unnecessary. 
Jonathan was deceived and met the army of 
Trypho at Ptolemais with a force of only a thou- 
sand men. His soldiers were cut down, and he 
himself was carried away under cover of a heavy 
snow-storm to the obscure village east of the 
Jordan, where with his sons, he met his fate at 
the hands of an assassin. His body was finally 
recovered by his brother Simon and carried to 
Modin, where a splendid monument, whose seven 



94 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

stately towers might be seen far and near, from 
sea and land, was erected above the last resting- 
place of the Maccabean family. 

Simon was now the only surviving son of 
Mattathias, and upon his shoulders fell the man- 
tles of the diplomatic Jonathan and of the nobler 
Judas and Mattathias. Confusion and strife were 
still prevalent in Syria, and Simon easily obtained 
from King Demetrius II, who was hard-pressed 
by his rival Trypho, a continuance of the privileges 
bestowed upon Jonathan, with one important ad- 
dition, the remission of all outstanding taxes and 
the promise of entire freedom from tribute for 
all time to come. By throwing off this last 
shackle of Syrian despotism, Judea had freed 
herself from the yoke of the Gentiles. Only 
one step was needed to complete the work com- 
menced by Jonathan, the removal of the two 
remaining Syrian garrisons. Gazara was cap- 
tured by Simon, and his son John Hyrcanus was 
made its governor. Finally, on the 23rd of 
May, B. C. 142, the inmates of the citadel at 
Jerusalem were starved into submission and the 
fortress, so long regarded by the Jews as the 
"fiend incarnate, " the "Satan of the holy city," 
was entered by Simon and his troops amid great 
rejoicing. 

According to Josephus, the people were called 
together, and it was decreed in solemn assembly 



INDEPENDENCE OF JUDEA 95 

that this "Beelzebub" of Israel be utterly demol- 
ished, "decapitated, as it were," that it might 
never again rear its head in haughty insolence 
above the Temple Mount. By the constant and 
arduous labor of many hands, for three years 
both night and day, it was reduced to the level 
of the surrounding plain, over which the Temple 
Mount at last held undisputed sway. 

The years which followed were peaceful and 
prosperous. If the ability of Jonathan had 
commanded the admiration of the people, it was 
Simon upon whom they bestowed their confidence 
and affection. "He was a genuinely pontifical and 
at the same time a genuinely royal figure. Upon 
his venerable gray head, tiara and crown could be 
joined without any evident impropriety." His 
sane, broad-minded rule which looked well to both 
the secular and spiritual interests of his kingdom 
was pleasing alike to the worldly and the pious. 
He fulfilled the prediction of the aged Mattathias 
by being a father to them all. First Maccabees 
draws a pleasant picture of the happy homes, 
the placid and contented old age, the active and 
wholesome youth which ^prevailed beneath his 
reign. The long-neglected fields were again tilled 
and fruitful, the poor cared for, the wicked pun- 
ished, and the temple beautified. A few Jewish 
coins, shekels and half-shekels, still in existence, 
are believed by experts to have been stamped in 



96 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

the reign of Simon, and documents and treaties 
were henceforth dated from the year of Simon, 
high priest and prince and governor of the Jews. 

The transferal of the office of high priest 
from the house of Aaron to the house of Asmon 
was a transgression of the law of Moses, and, 
as such, could not fail to be questioned by the more 
orthodox. To ratify the change, a solemn 
assembly of priests, princes, and people was con- 
voked, and it was resolved that the office of 
high priest be conferred upon Simon land his 
descendants forever. The decree was written 
upon brazen tablets, and placed in the courts of 
the temple; but the framers, half-frightened at 
their own audacity, added in self-protection 
the saving clause "until a prophet should be sent 
from God to show them a better way." 

Jonathan had taken the precaution to cement 
the friendship of the Jews and the Romans by 
renewing the first treaty between the two nations, 
and Simon also sent ambassadors to Rome to 
beg for a renewal of the old alliance. The 
messengers carried with them as a present to the 
Roman Senate a magnificent golden shield weigh- 
ing a thousand pounds, and in return received a 
promise of amity from the Roman authorities, 
who also sent letters to the kings of the surround- 
ing countries, commanding them to respect the 
authority of Simon, the high priest of the Jews, 



INDEPENDENCE OF JUDEA 97 

and to refrain from waging war against him. 

The last years of Simon's reign were troubled 
by war with Antiochus Sidetes of Syria. Simon 
was prevented by his great age from taking the 
field, but his sons, who were skilful generals, con- 
quered the Syrian army, and brought the dis- 
turbance to a speedy close. It seemed as if the 
long and honorable life of the aged high priest 
might be crowned with a peaceful death, but it 
was otherwise ordained. While inspecting the 
fortresses of his kingdom with his two sons, he 
visited his son-in-law Ptolemy, a wealthy and 
ambitious youth, who was commandant of the 
fortress of Dok. The three guests were royally 
entertained at a great banquet given in their 
honor. At its close, while the feasters were 
still under the influence of wine, they were treach- 
erously assassinated by the order of their 
scheming host, who wished to become king of 
Judea. 

The would-be usurper next sent his tools to 
Gazara to take the life of John Hyrcanus, the 
eldest surviving son and natural successor of 
Simon ; but John, who was informed by messengers 
of his brother-in-law's plan, had the murderers 
arrested and hastened to Jerusalem, whence he 
marched with an army upon the fortress of Dok 
to avenge the death of his father and two broth- 
ers. Ptolemy had in some way captured John's 



98 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

mother, and, to curb her son's zeal, the aged 
lady was placed half-naked upon the walls of the 
fortress and scourged until the blood ran. The 
heartless son-in-law threatened to hurl his victim 
from the dizzy height if her son prolonged the 
siege, and although, with a spirit worthy of the 
family into which she had married, she declared 
herself ready to endure any torture if only her 
husband's murderer might be fittingly punished, 
John, who could not bear the sight of her suffer- 
ing, gave up his first plan and contented himself 
with barricading the fortress. The coming of 
the Sabbatical year soon forbade furthur warfare, 
and Ptolemy fled from Judea, but not until his 
aged captive had shared the fate of her two sons 
and her husband. 

Soon after John's return from the fortress of 
Dok, he was attacked by Antiochus Sidetes, 
who had never given up his plans for the conquest 
of Palestine; and in the war which followed, the 
Jews lost their newly-won independence and were 
again compelled to pay tribute and furnish troops 
for a Syrian king. These were comparatively 
moderate terms, and as the records indicate that 
all Judea was overrun and conquered by the 
Syrian troops, it is probable that they were 
obtained only by the timely interference of Rome. 
In B. c. 129, Antiochus Sidetes died and his suc- 
cessors were weak and degenerate princes so 



INDEPENDENCE OF JUDEA 99 

completely occupied by their own petty quarrels 
that John had little reason to fear them. 

To guard against further emergencies, how- 
ever, he gathered a large army of mercenaries, 
and bent his entire energy toward strengthening 
the condition of his kingdom and widening its 
borders. Three ancient enemies of Israel were 
subdued by him. First the Moabites, living on 
the east side of the river Jordan, were conquered 
and the land of Moab was made a part of Judea; 
next the Samaritan capital of Shechem was taken 
by John's army, and the Samaritan temple on Mt. 
Gerizim, long the rival of the temple at Jerusa- 
lem, was utterly destroyed; then the Edomites, 
whose hatred of Israel dated back to the time 
when their ancestor Esau was deprived of his 
rightful inheritance by the crafty Jacob, were com- 
pelled to receive the rite of circumcision and the 
Jewish law; and finally, after a long and severe 
siege, the ancient city of Samaria was razed to the 
ground, and the neighboring streams were di- 
verted from their natural course and directed 
across its ruined site. 

The history of the Jews and Samaritans had 
long run in parallel lines. In the latter half of 
the eighth century B. C, the Israelites who lived 
in Samaria were carried as captives to Babylon 
and heathen colonists were imported in large 
numbers by the King of Assyria to inhabit the 



100 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

thinly populated land. The immigrants suffered 
from the depredations of the wild beasts which 
overran the country, and, doubtless at the sug- 
gestion of a few remaining Israelites who had 
escaped capitivity and with whom they had inter- 
married, they begged the King of Assyria to 
send them a priest to teach them how to worship 
the God of the land, that the offended Deity 
might be appeased and remove this sign of his 
displeasure. Their request was granted, and a 
mixed religion, half-heathen, half-Jewish, was 
adopted by the mixed population. The Penta- 
teuch became their sacred book, and an expected 
Messiah their cherished hope. When the Jews 
returned from exile and began to rebuild the 
temple, the Samaritans asked for a share in the 
work. The contempt with which their request 
was refused resulted in a fierce and lasting enmity 
between the two races, haughty disdain on the 
part of the Jews, and the reluctant and imperfect 
imitation sometimes rendered by a subordinate 
to an envied and hated superior, on the part of 
the Samaritans, of whom Josephus declared 
"that when the Jews are in adversity, they deny 
that they are of kin to them ; but when they per- 
ceive that some good fortune has befallen them, 
they immediately pretend to have communion 
with them, saying that they belong to them." 
Historical events prove that the Jewish his- 



INDEPENDENCE OF JUDEA 101 

torian's opinion was founded upon fact. When 
the Jews asked Alexander the Great for freedom 
from tribute during the Sabbatical year, the 
Samaritans, as their relatives, declared themselves 
entitled to the same privilege. Samaritan colon- 
ists followed the Jews to Egypt and Samaritan 
and Jewish colonies were planted side by side; 
but during the persecution under Antiochus 
Epiphanes, the Samaritans disowned all relation- 
ship with the Jews, allowing the mad monarch 
to dedicate the temple on Mt. Gerizim to the 
Olympian Jupiter, and giving the new patron a 
warm welcome. After the destruction of the 
temple on Mt. Gerizim, a new temple was erected 
in Shechem, and at the time of the events recorded 
in the New Testament, the Samaritans still hated 
and imitated the Jews, reverencing their sacred 
books and maintaining a lax worship of their 
God. 

John Hyrcanus now reigned over a greater 
kingdom than any Jewish monarch since the 
glorious days of David and Solomon; but as the 
body of the kingdom grew and waxed strong, the 
fine spirit of faith and heroism which had sus- 
tained the Maccabees through the horrors of the 
persecution and the gallant struggle which suc- 
ceeded it, deteriorated into a respectable and suc- 
cessful materialism. Spiritual welfare was 
pushed more and more into the background, and 



102 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

secular prosperity engrossed the attention of 
high priest and nobles. In the ancient days of 
Israel's prosperity, the ambitious designs of 
Jewish kings had been checked by high priest or 
prophet, but now the supremacy of both church 
and state, a heavy weight, rested in the unre- 
strained hands of one man. The name of the 
reigning prince was stamped upon the coins of 
the realm, and coins still extant prove that 
throughout the years of his long reign, John was 
constantly becoming more and more like the 
Syrian despots of the surrounding provinces, the 
inscription "Jochanan the high priest and the con- 
gregation of the Jews" on earlier coins becoming 
upon those issued at a later date, "Jochanan the 
high priest and chief of the congregation of 
the Jews." 

The worldly nature of John's policy excited 
the antagonism of the pious, who in his reign first 
made their appearance as Pharisees. The Phar- 
isees or Separatists sprang from the seed sown 
by Ezra and Nehemiah in the fifth century B. C. 
Their peculiar conception of duty to God, the 
observance of not only the law of Moses, but also 
of all the minute and petty details of the oral 
tradition, was their idol, and upon its altar, they 
willingly sacrificed worldly prosperity and po- 
litical ambition. Opposed to the Pharisees were 
the Sadducees, the priestly class from whose ranks 



INDEPENDENCE OF JUDEA 103 

me high priest was chosen. They were the 
nobles and aristocrats of Judea who labored for 
its political advancement, and cared compara* 
tively little for either law or religion. They 
chose to be comfortable in this world rather than 
endure discomforts by which they might gain the 
promised blessings of a doubtful world to come, 
and when any question arose between serving an 
earthly and a heavenly king, decided without 
hesitation in favor of the former. 

The original Maccabees, from the very nature 
of the struggle, must necessarily be the friends 
and adherents of the Pharisees, but when the 
policy of their successors became one of political 
aggrandizement, they were obliged to depend 
upon Sadducees for support. 

A legendary anecdote is told of the break 
between John Hyrcanus and the Pharisees. A 
great banquet was given by the king to the Phar- 
isees and the tables were spread with food which 
should recall the difference between past and 
present. As they sat about the board upon 
which the roots and herbs which had been the 
humble fare of the Maccabean rebels, were 
placed side by side with the sumptious viands 
upon which the court of John 'Hyrcanus dined 
daily, the king begged his guests to correct him 
if in any way he had done that which was 
displeasing to God or transgressed the law which 



104 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

was their rule for a righteous life. A shower of 
flattery, broken only by one dissenting voice, 
followed his request. A certain Eleazar, a 
'Pharisee, replied "If you would know the truth, 
O king, renounce the high-priesthood and be 
content with the principality." Eleazar's expo- 
sure of the truth made the king very angry, for 
he well knew that only a descendant of the 
house of Aaron was eligible to the office of high 
priest. At the suggestion of Jonathan, a Sad- 
ducee, he tested the loyalty of the Pharisees by 
asking them what punishment should be inflicted 
upon Eleazar for his impertinence. The answer 
was, "Forty stripes save one," and as the king 
felt that banishment or death would be a more 
fitting punishment for so grave a misdemeanor, 
he henceforth distrusted the Pharisees and be- 
came the friend and ally of the Sadducees. 

John Hyrcanus was so powerful a king that 
the Pharisees were completely dominated by 
him. His long and able reign of thirty-one 
years cannot fail to command our admiration 
and respect, but, at its close, unrestrained power 
and untempered materialism had given the down- 
hill course of the house of Asmon such impetus 
that we find in the sons who succeeded him two 
of the most vicious and degraded characters of 
Jewish history. 

Aristobulus, his eldest son and successor, was 



INDEPENDENCE OF JUDEA 105 

the first of the Asmonean princes to wear the 
diadem and assume the title King of the Jews. 
Varied reports of his career have been handed 
down to us. He was the avowed friend and 
disciple of the Greeks, whose historians praise 
his goodness and humanity, but Josephus asserts 
that his short reign was lurid with crime. His 
account tells us that John Hyrcanus had ap- 
pointed his widow as his successor, but that she 
was imprisoned and starved to death by her 
inhuman son when she asserted her claim to the 
throne; also that he imprisoned three of his 
brothers and murdered a fourth in a fit of 
suspicious jealousy. 

When Aristobulus died, after a brief reign of 
one year, his brothers were released from prison 
by his widow, Alexandra Salome, and the elder, 
Alexander Jannaeus, became high priest and 
king. In accordance with the dictates of the 
Jewish law, the widow of the dead king became 
the wife of the reigning Alexander, a worthless 
reprobate, whose long reign was a series of unin- 
teresting intrigues and petty wars in which he 
showed no marked ability and was often unsuc- 
cessful. It was utterly revolting to' the Phari- 
sees that this young man, who spent his life in 
carousals with vulger associates, should rule the 
chosen people of God and should officiate at 
their sacred ceremonies; and when, at the Feast 



106 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

of Tabernacles, he poured out the sacred libation 
with a sneering remark, they could no longer 
conceal their disrespect, but openly pelted him 
with citron they had brought for a sacrifice. 
Alexander summoned his hired soldiers, and six 
hundred Jews perished in the massacre which 
followed. A wooden barricade was erected 
about the altar, and by its shelter the high priest 
was protected from further expression of his 
people's regard when he performed the duties 
of his sacred office. 

Bitter hostility and a long war in which the 
Pharisees were joined by Demetrius Eukairos, 
was the result of the outbreak. First one side 
and then the other won temporary advantages, 
but the conflict ended in the defeat of the Phari- 
sees. To celebrate his victory, the high priest 
and king crucified eight hundred Pharisees and 
tortured and killed wives and children before 
the eyes of his dying victims. At the same 
hour, he gave his mistresses and dancers a great 
feast, and entertained them by the sight of the 
dreadful spectacle. 

Alexander's misrule was ended in his forty- 
eighth year, when he died of an illness which was 
the result of his licentious life. Jewish annals 
tell us that he repented on his death-bed and 
advised his wife, Alexandra, to whom he left his 



INDEPENDENCE OF JUDEA 107 

kingdom, to become the ally of the Pharisees 
and to be guided by them. 

Queen Alexandra was the sister of Simon ben 
Shetach, the famous Pharisee, and was a conscien- 
tious and God-fearing woman. Josephus char- 
acterizes her reign as follows: "She" had indeed 
the name of regent, but the Pharisees had the 
authority, for it was they who restored such as 
were banished and set such as were prisoners at 
liberty, and to say all at once, they differed 
nothing from lords." On the whole, the people, 
over whom the Pharisees exerted a tremendous 
influence, were well-pleased with the peace and 
abundance of Alexandra's reign. It was de- 
scribed in the Pharisaic tradition as a golden age 
in which even the fruits of the soil were miracu- 
lously blessed by the piety and goodness of the 
queen. Under Simon ben Shetach, and Queen 
Salome, "rain fell on the eve of the Sabbath, 
so that corns of wheat were as large as kidneys, 
the barley corns as large as olives, and the lentils 
like golden denarii; the scribes gathered such 
corns, and preserved specimens of them in order 
to show future generations what sin entails." 



CHAPTER VII 

THE RIVAL CLAIMANTS FOR THE ; 
JEWISH THRONE 

The Pharisaic Queen Alexandra had two sons. 
The elder, Hyrcanus, was the friend of the Phar- 
isees and had officiated as high priest during the 
nine years of his mother's reign. Of colorless 
and insipid personality, ' insignificant in both 
appearance and character, he was thrust by the 
accident of inheritance into the conspicuous niche 
which he could never fill, and much less adorn. 
Aristobulus, the younger son, was the favorite 
and stirring leader of the gay young Sadducees 
of Judea. He was capable and ambitious, in 
every way a contrast to his indolent elder 
brother. 

It was contrary to every law of human su- 
premacy save that of birth that the energetic 
younger brother should submit to the feeble 
rule of the elder, and already, during his 
mother's last illness, Aristobulus, with his band 
of young nobles, had taken possession of the 
most important strongholds in Judea with the 

108 



THE RIVAL PRINCES 109 

intention of making the sovereign power his own 
when the time should be ripe for action. Hyr- 
canus had no sooner been formally crowned 
high priest and king after his mother's death, 
than he was attacked by Aristobulus, and so 
badly beaten in a battle at Jericho that he was 
thoroughly intimidated and hastily sought refuge 
behind the sheltering walls of the citadel at 
Jerusalem, whence he sent a messenger to 
arrange terms of peace. An agreement was 
soon reached, for Hyrcanus, who had been 
reminded of his various deficiences with broth- 
erly frankness, was easily persuaded to exchange 
places with Aristobulus; to give up his public 
position, retaining only the property he had ac- 
quired; and to acknowledge his brother high 
priest and king in his stead. The treaty was 
ratified in a public gathering at the temple, and 
the two brothers, after exchanging oaths and 
embracing before the assembled people, departed 
thence, Aristobulus to the royal palace, and 
Hyrcanus, now a private individual, to the 
former home of Aristobulus. As a final pre- 
caution, the terms of the contract were cemented 
by the betrothal of Alexander, the eldest son of 
Aristobulus, to Alexandra, the daughter and 
only child of the deposed Hyrcanus. 

Hyrcanus had hardly begun, in perfect con- 
tentment to live the life of harmless mediocrity 



110 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

to which he was consigned, when Its even tenor 
was broken by the disturbing influence of one 
who was to wrest the rudder of the storm-tossed 
Jewish ship of state from the unsteady hands of 
the Asmonean kings; Antipater the Edomite, 
best known to history as the father of Herod 
the Great. The father of this descendant of the 
defrauded Esau had been appointed governor 
of Edom (or Idumea) by Alexander Jannaeus, 
and his son, as his successor, had become a prom- 
inent figure in the court of the Jewish sovereigns. 
He was clever and unprincipled and possessed, in 
the superlative degree, eyes keen to discern in 
each man the hidden spring which controls 
action, and presence of mind to touch it with deft 
fingers at the critical moment. By tact and 
diplomacy, he had gained a large following of 
prominent Jews and of the Arabian chiefs whose 
territory bordered upon Idumea. As he saw in 
the weakling Hyrcanus a tool with which he 
might fashion for himself a high seat in Judea, 
he espoused the cause of this second disinher- 
ited elder brother of the seed of Abraham; the 
two became life-long friends and the image of 
the Idumean's sinister designs was henceforth 
the central figure in the mind of Hyrcanus, 
which, mirror-like, reflected the thought and 
purpose of the last passer-by. 

To make trouble for Aristobulus and excite 



THE RIVAL PRINCES 111 

sympathy for his friend, Antipater was con- 
stantly intimating that the latter had been 
unfairly treated. He lost no opportunity to 
circulate false reports m regard to Aristobulus 
and persistently reminded the elder prince of 
his lost inheritance, audaciously suggesting that 
on account of his younger brother's enmity, his 
life was no longer safe in Judea. The insinu- 
ations of Antipater finally had the desired effect; 
Hyrcanus was induced to flee with him to the 
country of his friend and ally, the powerful 
Arabian chief Aretas. By promising to restore 
the twelve cities taken from the Arabians by 
Alexander Jannaeus, the rebels persuaded Aretas 
to join them, and with their combined forces, 
they marched back into Judea. Aristobulus was 
met and defeated, his fickle soldiers deserted in 
large numbers to the victors, and with a follow- 
ing of only a few faithful priests, he fled to that 
refuge of all distressed Asmoneans, the temple 
fortress, where he was beseiged by Aretas and 
the victorious Pharisees. Two incidents of the 
siege related by Josephus indicate that Jewish 
piety was fast becoming the empty shell of its 
former self. 

A virtuous priest, Onias by name, whose prayer 
for rain in time of a severe drought had been 
followed by abundant showers, was commanded 
by the Pharisees to invoke the displeasure of God 



112 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

upon the party of Aristobulus. He at first re- 
fused, but when he was compelled to speak, re- 
luctantly arose, and uttered this prayer in the 
presence of the assembled people. "O God, the 
King of the whole world, since those that stand 
now with me are Thy people, and those that are 
besieged are also Thy priests, I beseech Thee that 
Thou wilt neither harken to the prayers of those 
against these, nor bring to effect what these pray 
against those." Whereupon he was stoned by 
the wicked Pharisees and paid with his life for 
his brave neutrality. 

The date of the passover occurred soon after 
the death of Onias Aristobulus and his friends 
could procure no lambs for a paschal offering 
in the besieged city. They begged the besieg- 
ing party to provide them with animals for 
the needed sacrifice, promising them in return 
any sum of money they might ask. When the ex- 
orbitant amount of a thousand pieces of silver 
had been named as the price of a single lamb, the 
money was let down over the walls of the city to 
the Pharisees, who coolly pocketed it, and the 
cheated priests waited in vain for the promised 
sacrifice. 

While the rival claimants for the Jewish 
throne were entrenched, one within and one 
without the besieged city of Jerusalem, Pompey, 
the Roman imperator, was daily winning fresh 



THE RIVAL PRINCES 113 

victories in his contest for the dictatorship of the 
East, which had been gradually slipping from the 
hands of Rome. Already he had sent advance 
lieutenants into Syria which, torn by internal 
strife and dismembered by the hostile tribes 
which encircled it, was soon to fall an easy prey 
to the Roman commander and his army. 

Reports of the strife in Judea had reached 
Scaurus, Pompey's advance lieutenant in Syria, 
and he hastened into Palestine to have a hand in 
the matter; for Rome, the mistress of the world, 
must assert her authority even in this remote 
corner of her domain. Scaurus was met by am- 
bassadors from Aristobulus and Hyrcanus, who 
both promised him equally large sums of money 
for the favor and aid of Rome. His decision 
was characteristic of the Roman of his day. Ar- 
istobulus was preferred because he was better 
able to pay the promised bribe. The money was 
accepted, the siege raised, and Aretas sent home 
with the threat that if his hostility were continued, 
he would be pronounced the enemy of the Roman 
people. But such mild disposal of his foes was 
far from satisfactory to the fiery Aristobulus. 
With his followers, he pursued Aretas to Papy- 
ron, where a battle was fought in which six 
thousand Pharisees and Arabians were killed. 

The coming of Pompey, which occurred about 
a year later, was awaited by the Jews with eager 



114 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

interest, for Judea was still without a king, and 
the choice of the great Roman was to be final. 
While the arbiter of Jewish fate was still at 
Damascus, he was met by messengers who bore as 
a gift from Aristobulus, a golden vine worth five 
hundred talents in gold, of such rare beauty and 
exquisite workmanship that for years it was 
deemed worthy of a conspicuous place in the 
Roman Capitol. 

In the following spring, Damascus witnessed 
the first memorable meeting of the Roman and 
Jewish potentates. The chief justice in this tri- 
bunal before which the Jewish princes were to 
plead their cause was the handsome and engaging 
Roman in whom honesty and ambition strove 
ever for the mastery. Fresh from his victory 
over the pirates of the Mediterranean, and his 
yet more brilliant victory over Mithridates, his 
thirst for power and conquest was still unap- 
peased; he was still seeking new adventures and 
novel experiences, still looking for new worlds 
to conquer. The appearance of the suppliants be- 
fore the bar of justice was characteristic. Aris- 
tobulus entered Damascus surrounded by all the 
tinsel and glitter of Oriental royalty. He was 
accompanied by a band of young cavaliers who, 
with their scarlet mantles, long curling hair, and 
gay trappings, appeared "not as though they were 
to plead their cause in a court of justice, but as 



THE RIVAL PRINCES 115 

if they were marching in a pompous procession. " 
Antipater was, as always, the commanding figure 
and spokesman in the party of the insignificant 
Hyrcanus, On account of his hated Idumean blood, 
the wily Edomite dared not openly declare him- 
self a candidate for the throne of Judea, but by 
making Hyrcanus his echo, he had become the 
real, if not the acknowledged rival and opponent 
of the war-like Aristobulus. He did not hesitate 
to accuse the younger prince of persistently stir- 
ring up sedition and rebellion; he even implied 
that Aristobulus had been allied with the pirates 
of the Mediterranean just conquered by Pompey, 
and his arraignment was confirmed by no less than 
a thousand Jews of good standing whom he had 
brought as witnesses. There was yet a third 
party of suppliants, almost disregarded at the 
time, but destined later to become a ruling fac- 
tion, to whom the worldliness and strife of the 
kingly government had become obnoxious and 
who wished to re-establish the old theocratic 
order of priests. 

The showy parade of Aristobulus and his fol- 
lowers was wholly offensive to Pompey, who still 
retained the simple tastes of the early Romans. 
It was apparent from the very first that Hyrcanus 
was to be preferred and that the wily and agree- 
able Edomite was better fitted to cope with Rome 
than his outspoken and impetuous opponent; but 



116 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

with the hesitation for which he was distin- 
guished, the imperator still deferred the final 
decision. 

Pompey' s wide-spread fame for humanity and 
justice had inspired the confidence of Aristobulus, 
but like many others who had looked to the great 
Roman "for guidance in their perplexities and 
deliverance from danger, found there was neither 
light nor leading in the idol he had set up for 
worship." Half-distracted, he fluctuated be- 
tween pride and fear. His better judgment 
told him that opposition to Rome was futile, his 
pride that the humiliation of surrender would be 
unendurable. In a fit of desperation, he shut 
himself up in the fortress of Alexandreum, and 
there defied the Roman conqueror. When, how- 
ever, his countrymen entreated him not to make 
war against the Romans, and Pompey commanded 
him to capitulate, he yielded hoping against hope 
that the preference of the Roman commander 
might yet be his ; but finding that his expectations 
were unwarranted, he again became reckless, re- 
tired to Jerusalem, closed the gates of the city 
and prepared for war. Pompey and his Roman 
legions advanced upon the holy city, and again 
the pride of Aristobulus yielded to his fear. He 
went to Pompey in person, begged his forgiveness 
and threw himself upon his mercy, promising him 
a large sum of money and a peaceful entrance 



THE RIVAL PRINCES 117 

into Jerusalem. But when the followers of Aris- 
tobulus declined to fulfill his promise, and Pom- 
pey's lieutenant was refused admittance to the 
city, the patience of the Roman commander gave 
way. Too proud to submit, too faithless to be a 
loyal ally, and too powerless to control his own 
soldiers, Aristobulus had displayed his instability 
at every turn. He was thrown into chains, and 
the Romans prepared to besiege the city. Hyr- 
canus and his followers opened the gates of Jeru- 
salem to their Roman friends, and assisted them 
in every possible way, but the patriots, angered by 
the capture of their king, opposed the Romans in 
the temple fortress. For three months the siege 
continued. Then the patriots' faithful observ- 
ance of the Sabbath caused their downfall. 
During the sacred day of rest, the Romans were 
able for the first time to raise an embankment on 
which to place their battering-rams, and one of 
the great towers tottered and fell beneath the 
shower of great stones which rained down upon 
it. Cornelius, the son of the dictator Sulla, was 
the first man to scale the walls and enter the for- 
tress through the breach. Swarms of Roman 
soldiers, embittered by the stubborn resistance of 
the patriots, followed him, and there ensued one 
of those dreadful massacres all too frequent in 
the history of Jerusalem. Twelve thousand citi- 
zens were slain. Mad with horror and despair, 



118 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

many of the conquered threw themselves over 
precipitous cliffs or set fire to their houses and 
perished in the flames. The priests in the black 
robes which replaced the white garments of 
happier days refused to leave their post, and 
were cut down as they sat motionless around the 
temple altar. 

Led by curiosity, through the courts of the 
temple, past the sacred candlestick, the golden 
table of shew bread, and consecrated treasury 
which contained at this time no less than two 
thousand talents in gold, Pompey and his soldiers 
paused at last before the threshold of the Holy 
of Holies, beyond which even the audacious" feet 
of Antiochus Epiphanes had never passed. It 
was a time of unrest and expansion in Rome, 
when men felt the need of a wider life and 
broader range of thought. Greek philosophy 
and Oriental superstition, even the religion of an 
ally in remote Judea, were subjects for specula- 
tion and discussion; and since reports of the 
quarrel of the rival princes had reached the ears 
of Rome, many had been the conjectures in 
Roman schools of philosophy as to who and what 
the God of the Jews might be. Was the object 
of Jewish veneration, as rumour said, the head of 
an ass, the venerable law giver himself with 
his long beard and tables of stone, the golden 
cherubim which had been stolen and carried away 



THE RIVAL PRINCES 119 

to Babylon, or a marble god in human form like 
those which adorned the altar of the Roman 
capitol? Pompey drew aside the curtain which 
concealed the truth, and the empty and silent 
room where sincere high priests had communed 
with the invisible Jehovah, stood revealed. 
With the sight of that quiet inner shrine, Rome 
received her first conception of a God so high and 
holy that He transcended human thought and 
that any attempted representation of Him formed 
by human hands would have seemed a profan- 
ation to His followers. With an honesty which 
the Roman officials of his day rarely possessed, 
Pompey left the treasures of the temple quite un- 
touched, and graciously commanded that all 
traces of contamination produced by his entrance 
be removed. 

The Jews were now at the mercy of their con- 
querors. The leaders of the insurrection were 
executed, and Judea, stripped of all the territory 
acquired by the Asmonean monarchs, became 
once again a tributary state. Hyrcanus was ap- 
pointed vassal high priest, and Aristobulus with 
his children was taken captive to Italy, where 
with three hundred and sixty-two other captive 
princes, he graced the greatest triumph that 
Rome had ever witnessed. The golden vine with 
which he had hoped to purchase the favor of 
Rome was displayed on the car which bore the 



120 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

spoils of the campaign, and as he walked with his 
children before the chariot of the victorious Pom- 
pey, his beauty and noble bearing so attracted the 
attention of the Roman populace that they be- 
stowed upon him the title, "Our Hero of 
Jerusalem." 

Aristobulus and his children were retained in 
Rome as hostages; and the Judean captives of 
inferior rank who had been transported in large 
numbers, and at their release, had lacked either 
the means or the disposition to return to their 
native land, settled on the further bank of the 
Tiber. There they formed the nucleus of that 
community of Jews who so excited the interest of 
the Romans that their peculiar customs and re- 
ligious observances became the theme of which 
Horace and other Latin authors frequently 
wrote. The colony formed by these humble 
captives increased constantly in size and exerted 
an influence, of which their Roman captors had 
not dreamed, for from the community thus es- 
tablished sprang, a century later, the Christian 
church of Rome. 

Although the spirit of self-sacrifice and faith 
in God which had glorified the patriotism of the 
original Maccabees was long since dead, their 
courage still lived in their captured descendants, 
who were determined not to submit without a 
struggle. In B. c. 57, Alexander, the elder son 



THE RIVAL PRINCES 121 

of Aristobulus, who had escaped from his cap- 
tors on the way to Rome, became the leader of 
an uprising in Judea. He received the enthus- 
iastic support of his countrymen, and gained one 
or two victories, but was soon obliged to sur- 
render by Gabinius, who, to prevent further re- 
bellion, deprived the high priest of all political 
power, and divided the country into five districts, 
each governed by its own sanhedrin. In the 
following year, Aristobulus with his son Anti- 
gonus, succeeded in eluding the vigilance of their 
Roman guards, and fleeing to Judea, took refuge 
in the fortress of Alexandreum where the Jewish 
prince had once before defied the Romans, only 
to find as before that resistance was useless and 
independence impossible. As a punishment for 
his audacity, he was sentenced to a life of solitary 
confinement in Rome, but his children were set 
free by the Roman senate. In B. c. 5-5, Alexander 
made a last desperate attempt to regain the 
kingdom wrested from his father, but again met 
with discomfiture and defeat at the hands of the 
Romans. 

Little beyond a few scattered dates is known 
of the period succeeding these insurrections. 
In B. c. 55, Crassus, the Roman triumvir, sacked 
the Jewish temple, and when six years later, the 
civil war between Caesar and Pompey took place, 
Judea, like other Roman provinces, was compelled 



122 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

to bear a heavy burden of hardship and expense. 
During this war, Caesar released Aristobulus and 
was about to send him into Judea at the head of 
two Roman legions when the stormy life of the 
Jewish prince was ended by a dose of poison from 
the hands of Pompey' s adherents. His son Alex- 
ander was at the same time executed in Antioch 
by the command of Pompey. 

After Caesar's victory at Phars'alia had 
brought the civil war to a close, Antipater, who 
since the surrender of Jerusalem to the Romans 
had possessed what little power the Romans 
had thought best to entrust to the Jews, with 
Hyrcanus did everything in his power to win 
the favor of the victor. They were so successful 
that Antipater's tortuous career was crowned 
by the honor he had long desired. He was 
made procurator of Judea and the office of 
ethnarch was conferred upon Hyrcanus. The 
divisions established by Gabinius were abolished, 
the Jews were allowed to rebuild the city walls 
destroyed by Pompey, and such favors were be- 
stowed upon the nation by Caesar that at his 
death, he is said to have been more sincerely 
mourned by them than by any other class of His 
subjects. 



CHAPTER VIII 

HEROD THE GREAT 

Even when Herod the Great was yet a lad in 
school, an Essenian soothsayer, attracted by the 
remarkable strength and beauty of the boy, 
slapped the wondering child on the back and 
proclaimed to him his future destiny as King of 
the Jews. i\.t twenty-five, or, according to 
some historians, at fifteen, he was made gov- 
ernor of Galilee by his father, Antipater, an 
office in which he found ample outlet for his 
tremendous energy of mind and body; and at 
sixty, he led a campaign against the Arabians with 
unimpaired vigor. Like the original Esau, he 
was a "mighty hunter." It is said that in one 
day's hunt he slew not less than thirty stags, 
bears, and v/ild asses ; and in archery and throw- 
ing the lance, he excelled all the youth of his 
generation. In stature and personal appearance, 
he was superb. Assassins who had planned to 
surprise and kill him in the bath, fled in fright 
at the sight of his unarmed and unclothed majesty. 

His qualities of mind and heart were not less 
123 



124 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

unusual than his physical strength. He both 
loved and ill-treated the members of his own 
family with the same passionate intensity, and 
his crimes against them were followed by fits 
of overwhelming remorse. In spite of the vice 
and cruelty of his later years, many of the servants 
who had become attached to him in his youth 
were faithful to him throughout his entire life. 
Among them was his private secretary and con- 
stant companion, Nicolaus of Damascus, one of 
the foremost scholars of the age, and the author 
of a world's history in one hundred and forty- 
four volumes. Other scholars gathered about 
him and his interest in Greek culture made his 
court a center of Greek learning where his taste 
for history and philosophy were gratified by 
after dinner discussions with the learned men of 
the day. Architecture was his especial delight, 
and, beneath his generous patronage, master- 
pieces in building sprang up not only in Palestine, 
but in many cities of Asia Minor and Greece. 

From his father Antipater, he inherited the 
qualities which had made the latter a successful 
leader of men, — the ability to discern men's 
motives and presence of mind to use them to his 
own advantage. Like Antipater, he had the wisdom 
to conciliate where he could not compel, to win by 
competent service and faithful friendship where 
force of arms would have been useless. But 



HEROD THE GREAT 125 

selfishness, and unrestrained passion lay coiled 
like twin canker-worms at the base of all his 
budding virtues, all the more gross because of 
the very vehemence and intensity of the nature 
upon which they fed. Like Esau, he sold his 
spiritual birth-right for a mess of pottage, the 
pottage of wealth, power and fame. 

The young governor of Gallilee found his 
domain infested with bands of Jewish insurgents 
who terrorized the border villages of Syria by 
their lawless incursions, and was so successful in 
hunting down and killing the brigands that ballads 
in praise of his courage were sung throughout 
Syria. But in Judea his daring assumed a dif- 
ferent aspect. The court of Hyrcanus, the high 
priest, was thronged with weeping mothers, who 
begged redress for sons slain without a trial and 
without a sentence; and when, at length, the 
robber chief, a youth of noble family, was sum- 
marily captured and killed, Hyrcanus was obliged, 
though much against his will, to summon his friend 
Antipater's son before the Sanhedrin to answer 
for his life. As it was customary for the accused 
to appear before the court in robes of mourning 
and with dishevelled hair, the august body was 
hushed into silence by the appearance of one who 
entered the assembly chamber with the air and 
bearing of a young prince. Herod was clad in 
purple, and his long black hair was magnificently 



126 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

dressed. He was accompanied by a guard of 
Roman soldiers, and bore a message from Sextus 
Caesar, legate of Syria, commanding his acquittal. 
In the presence of such boldness and splendor, 
only one member of the council had the courage 
to speak. Shammai, a Pharisee of high repute, 
broke the silence by declaring that the audacious 
demeanor of the culprit foreboded evil and that 
his fellow councillors would one day answer for 
their neglect with their lives, should they fail to 
punish him, a warning which was recalled when 
Herod, upon becoming King of Judea, ordered 
the execution of forty-five leading Sadducees, all 
of whom were probably members of the San- 
hedrin. To avert the impending sentence of 
death, Hyrcanus hastily adjourned the assembly 
and advised the culprit to leave Jerusalem with- 
out delay. His advice was taken, but Herod, 
with characteristic buoyancy, soon reappeared 
at the head of an army and was with great diffi- 
culty restrained by his father from inflicting a 
terrible vengeance upon the authors of his indig- 
nity. Of so little consequence was the life and 
authority of the Jews to Rome that even during 
his trial, the offender had been pronounced ruler 
of Coele-Syria by the Roman governor of Syria. 

In B. c. 44, the death of Caesar threw the 
Roman Empire into confusion, and Cassius came 
into Syria to collect an army. Antipater, with 



HEROD THE GREAT 127 

Hyrcanus, hastened to propitiate the murderer 
of their former friend and patron with vast sums 
of money wrung from the citizens of Judea, and 
four cities were sold into slavery because they 
were unable to pay their share of the contribution. 
Antipater enjoyed the patronage for which he 
had paid this heavy price only a year. In B. c. 
43, he was poisoned by a rival, Malichus, and 
died bequeathing to his sons,'Phasael and Herod, 
not only the government of Palestine, but also 
the legacy of accumulated hatred and distrust 
which his policy had inspired. Jewish uprisings 
in Galilee and Jerusalem followed his death, and 
to make matters worse, a delegation of Jews had 
been sent to Rome to bring accusations of a most 
serious nature against Herod and Phasael. 

In the meantime, the kaleidoscope of Roman 
history had again changed. Cassius, Brutus, 
and Sextus Caesar had been swept from their 
high places, and all Asia had fallen into the hands 
of Mark Antony, the boyhood friend of Herod. 
When Herod appeared to defend himself, he 
found in the Roman ruler, the congenial comrade 
of his younger days, a friendship doubtless 
reinforced by the huge bribes with which the 
Edomite had learned to enlist the sympathy of 
the Romans. The aged high priest Hyrcanus 
also came before Antony to plead the cause of 
his friend Antipater's sons, and the hearing re- 



128 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

suited in the complete acquittal of the two offend- 
ers and their appointment as tetrachs of Judea. 

In his extreme youth, Herod had married a 
woman of his own race, Doris, by whom he had 
one son, Antipater; but the romance of his life 
was his love for the beautiful and high-spirited 
Mariamne, a flower that had bloomed late upon 
the now fast withering stalk of Asmon. This 
princess, the grand-daughter of both Hyrcanus 
and Aristobulus, united in herself the rival claims 
of the two branches of the the house of Asmon; 
and as the hatred of the Jews for Rome and its 
Idumean supporters and their undying devotion 
to the Maccabean family was a danger which, 
like the sword suspended by a single hair above 
the head of Damocles, constantly threatened to 
fall upon Herod and destroy him, a union with 
this descendant of the Maccabees was a matter 
of policy as well as love. 

The betrothal had not long taken place when 
events occurred by which it was to be indefinitely 
prolonged. Antigonus, the only remaining son 
of the lamented captive king Aristobulus, had 
long desired to fan the smouldering embers of 
Jewish patriotism into a flame. He found the 
opportunity he sought in an alliance with the 
hordes of Parthians who had descended upon 
Asia, and were now sweeping everything before 
them, and promised the Parthian king a thousand 



HEROD THE GREAT 129 

talents in gold and five hundred of the fairest 
Jewish maidens if he would restore to him the 
kingdom of his fathers. 

•His offer was accepted. Multitudes of Par- 
thians entered Judea and surrounded Jerusalem; 
Hyrcanus and Phasael were decoyed into the 
Parthian camp and taken prisoners; Mark Antony 
was detained in Egypt by the wiles of Cleopatra; 
and Herod must face innumerable Parthians and 
his own hostile subjects alone. Resistance could 
result only in ruin and disaster, and flight, encum- 
bered with the defenseless women whom he could 
not leave exposed to the barbarity of the invad- 
ers, was equally perilous. Yet he resolved with- 
out hesitation upon the latter, and in the dead of 
night with a caravan of weeping charges, his 
affianced bride and the women and children of 
his own family, he started upon that journey 
whose thrilling adventures and desperate chances 
were so often recalled during the security of his 
later life. Sixty furlongs from Jerusalem he 
was attacked by hostile Jews and fought hand 
to hand for his life in an encounter so fierce that 
it was commemorated by the palace and city 
of Herodium, which he built years after, upon 
the scene of the conflict; and again when the 
delay occasioned by an overturned wagon im- 
perilled the safety of his party, he became des- 
perate and was dissuaded with difficulty from tak- 



130 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

ing his life with his own hands. In spite of the 
frequent skirmishes and difficulties of the way, 
the caravan finally reached Idumea in safety, 
and the women and children were left at the 
rock-bound fortress of Masada with Herod's 
brother Joseph. But his own journey was still 
unended. He must seek the aid of friends more 
powerful than himself. From the court of the 
Arabian king, whence he was driven as a fugi- 
tive, he hastened to Egypt, where he received 
the aid and escaped the web of Cleopatra ; thence 
he sailed through storm and shipwreck to Rome ; 
and again he was cordially received and saved 
from ruin by his old friend Antony. He entered 
the Roman Senate a fugitive and an outcast, to 
beg that the sovereignity of Judea might be 
bestowed upon the younger brother of Mariamne; 
he left the senate chamber walking between An- 
tony and Octavius, the acknowledged King of 
the Jews. 

When Herod returned to Judea he found 
Antigonus established as high priest and king, 
and the "King of the Jews" was obliged to fight 
three years before he could take possession of 
the kingdom bestowed upon him by the Roman 
Senate. He learned that Phasael had dashed 
his brains out in prison after the joyful news of 
his brother's escape had been brought to him, and 



HEROD THE GREAT 131 

Hyrcanus had been carried away into captiv- 
ity by the Parthians. The fortress Masada, 
which was still occupied by the women and 
children Herod had rescued from the invaders, 
was besieged by Antigonus and must be relieved; 
the rocky caves of Galilee must again be freed 
from his old enemies the brigands; and the Roman 
legates, who had been bribed by Antigonus, must 
be conciliated. It was consequently not until 
the spring of B. c. 37, after many adventures 
and hair-breadth escapes, that he had conquered 
all Palestine except its capital and was ready to 
undertake the siege of Jerusalem. After the 
battering-rams had been placed, Sosius came to 
his aid with a Roman army, and he felt so assured 
of his success that before the siege commenced 
he went to Samaria, where he celebrated his 
marriage with Mariamne, to whom he had been 
engaged five years. 

After a siege of three months, the fortress 
fell as it had fallen twenty-six years before, upon 
the Sabbath, and Herod entered his capital amid 
plunder and frightful cruelty which spared neither 
age nor sex. 

Antigonus hastened from the citadel, and 
throwing himself at the feet of Sosius, begged 
him with tears to spare his life; but the hard- 
hearted Roman, thinking a woman's name more 



132 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

suitable than a man's for one who displayed such 
effeminate weakness, replied with scornful laugh- 
ter, "Arise, Antigone," and ordered him bound. 

Either because he wished to spare his subjects 
or because he did not wish to incur the financial 
loss of a plundered capital, Herod allayed the 
bitter enmity of the Romans with many and rich 
gifts, and persuaded them to vacate Jerusalem; 
but the spark of kindly feeling generated by his 
preservation of Jewish life and property was 
completely extinguished by the barbarity with 
which he commenced his reign. Forty-five of 
Antigonus' adherents were executed; the royal 
jewels and the property of wealthy citizens were 
confiscated, and handed over to Antony. Even 
the coffins of the dead were searched that no 
hidden treasure might escape. The flood of 
Jewish hatred rose so high that the author of 
these atrocities dared not keep Antigonus to 
adorn the triumph of Antony, but had him taken 
to Antioch, where he was the first prince of royal 
blood to be beaten and beheaded by the Romans 
like a common criminal. 

To appease the people, the aged Hyrcanus 
was recalled from exile and made the recipient 
of many honors. Before his deportation, his 
nephew Antigonus had taken the precaution to 
remove his ears that he might be forever barred 
from the office of high priest by physical disfig- 



HEROD THE GREAT 133 

urement, and Hananiel, an obscure priest of the 
Babylonian colony, was thereupon appointed to 
take his place. 

Besides Hyrcanus, there still survived three 
descendants of the Maccabees; his daughter, 
Alexandra, an ambitious woman who had never 
become reconciled to the fallen fortunes of her 
house, and whose restless scheming did much to 
bring about its ruin; and her two children, 
Mariamne, the beautiful wife of Herod, and 
Aristobulus the last male representative of his 
house and the pride of his mother and sister. 
All the beauty and nobility of the original 
Maccabees lived again in Alexandra's children; 
and when the high-priesthood was bestowed upon 
Hananiel, both Mariamne and her mother felt 
that Aristobulus had been slighted and made 
every possible effort to secure the office for this 
last scion of their house. Alexandra begged her 
friend Cleopatra to use her influence with the 
all-powerful Antony, and Mariamne added her 
entreaties to those of her mother; Herod yielded 
and the sixteen-year old boy first performed the 
duties of his holy office in B. C. 35 at the Feast 
of Tabernacles, the most joyous festival of the 
Jewish year. When the assembled people saw 
the young prince, his beauty, his impressive 
stature, and noble bearing, enhanced by the 
gorgeous robes of office which he wore, he was 



134 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

in face and form so like the lamented princes 
who had preceded him that their enthusiasm 
could not be restrained, and word flew from 
mouth to mouth that an Asmonean monarch 
might yet become the King of the Jews. 

As a fitting close to the festal occasion, Alex- 
andra entertained the king and' the boy high 
priest at her castle in Jericho. The day was 
sultry, and the guests cooled themselves by 
bathing in the ponds which beautified the grounds 
about the palace. Aristobulus was urged by his 
brother-in-law to join in the sport, for among the 
bathers were those who understood Herod's 
wishes. Until evening, the boy priest gambolled 
in the water with the other guests. Then under 
cover of the growing darkness, he was drawn 
beneath the waves as if in play. They closed 
above him, and before his release, life had been 
extinguished. News of his death ran like wild- 
fire through Jerusalem, and the whole city was 
immersed in grief. Alexandra, in her despair, 
threatened to take her own life, and in the life 
of Mariamne a double tragedy was enacted. 
In spite of her finer nature which the rough 
Idumean could neither understand nor appre- 
ciate, he had taken her heart by storm. Now 
the form of the dead boy rose like an accusing 
ghost between them. The waves which had 
extinguished the life of the young prince had 



HEROD THE GREAT 135 

quenched the fire upon the king's hearthstone. 
Mariamne's love for Herod had died with Aris- 
tobulus. The author of all this misery shed 
genuine tears when he beheld the dead face, so 
like that of his beautiful wife, and tried in vain 
to allay her grief by a magnificent funeral. 

Danger and disaster now thickened about his 
pathway. Alexandra plotted ceaselessly to de- 
prive him of his throne; Cleopatra became his 
enemy; Antony, upon whom his security de- 
pended, was defeated and killed in the battle of 
Actium, and the favor of Augustus was still an 
uncertainty. "Like a hunted animal turned to 
bay, his passions became fiercer, his methods 
more desperate." The insignificant and dis- 
figured Hyrcanus, who in a moment of weakness 
had listened to the voice of his scheming 
daughter, now became an object of suspicion, 
and at the age of eighty, was tried and con- 
demned to death. 

Mariamne's coldness only increased the pas- 
sionate devotion of her husband. When he was 
summoned to Rome to answer for the life of 
Aristobulus, he could not bear the thought that 
should he never return, she might become the 
wife of another. He therefore entrusted her 
to the care of his uncle Joseph whom he com- 
manded to kill her immediately in case of his 
own death. The secret was revealed to Mari- 



136 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

amne by Joseph, and Herod, upon His return, 
was received with growing aversion. A second 
time the Idumean half- Jew was obliged to leave 
Jerusalem to secure the favor and goodwill of 
Augustus; and again Mariamne learned from 
her attendant that his love for her had been 
manifested in the same peculiar way. During 
this absence, Augustus made Herod the recip- 
ient of especial favors. He restored to him 
the district around Jericho which had been taken 
from him by Cleopatra, and seven other cities 
of Palestine were annexed to his kingdom; but 
when he returned, radiant with triumph, and 
wished to share his good fortune with Mariamne, 
she expressed positive resentment at his success; 
and he who had commanded the friendship of 
the Roman rulers of the world was powerless in 
the presence of his own wife. 

Nothing could have been more gratifying to 
Cypros and Salome, the mother and sister of 
Herod, than the growing breach between Mari- 
amne and himself. The unconcealed contempt 
of the Jewish princess for the Idumean descent 
of these ladies had long provoked their fury, 
and the dignified silence with which she re- 
sponded to their coarse abuse was more irri- 
tating than any words she could have uttered. 
Salome goaded Herod, already incensed by his 
wife's indifference, to a blind fury, by hinting 



HEROD THE GREAT 137 

that infidelity was the cause of Mariamne's 
coldness. To add fuel to the fire of his jealous 
distrust, she poisoned the wine which the queen 
prepared daily, and bribed the royal cup-bearer 
to accuse Mariamne of the crime. The cease- 
less persecution was continued until Herod 
was convinced of his wife's guilt, and Mariamne 
was tried and condemned as a result of the false 
charges brought against her. 

Friendless and alone, deserted even by her 
cowardly and selfish mother, who reproached her 
on the way to the block as the cause of all her 
family's woes, the Jewish princess met her death 
with splendid courage. She did not utter a word 
of complaint or fear, her color did not change, 
but "she died as she had lived, a true Maccabee." 

When Herod awoke from his fit of insane 
rage to find he had deprived himself of the being 
he loved best, his* grief and remorse knew no 
bounds. He tried to drown his sorrow in ex- 
cesses, prolonged drinking and hunting bouts. 
He sought in vain to console himself with the 
pretext that his loved one had not passed beyond 
the sound of his voice. His servants were for- 
bidden to speak of her death, and the house- 
hold was conducted as if she still occupied her 
apartments in the palace. At length even his 
great strength gave way under the prodigious 
strain on mind and body, and he lay 111 for 



138 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

months in Samaria, the scene of his early married 
life. The soliloquy of Herod's physician as he 
looks upon the stricken form of the unhappy 
king is reproduced in Stephen Phillips' Herod: 

Rest, and a world of leaves and stealing stream 
Or solemn swoon of music may allure 
Homeward the ranging spirit of the king. 
These things avail ; but these are things of men. 
To me indeed it seems, who with dim eyes 
Behold this Herod motionless and mute, 
To me it seems that they who grasp the world, 
The kingdom and the power and the glory, 
Must pay with deepest misery of spirit, 
Atoning unto God for a brief brightness, 
And ever ransom., like this rigid king, 
The outward victory with inward loss. 

Herod was roused from his despondency by 
the news that Alexandra plotted to steal his 
throne, and the scheming queen was at last con- 
demned to the fate she had long deserved. The 
most brilliant period of his reign followed her 
death, but the loss of Mariamne had left an in- 
effaceable impression upon mind and body. He 
sought oblivion in polygamy and nine wives 
became inmates of his home. Two sons re- 
sembling their dead mother in face and bearing 
still remained to him. They were carefully ed- 
ucated at Rome and brilliant marriages were 
arranged for them that their father's high hopes 
for their future might be fulfilled. But when 



HEROD THE GREAT 139 

they returned from Italy to the polluted atmos- 
phere of that crime-stained home they could 
never forget that their father had consented to 
their mother's execution. With her beauty, 
they had inherited her high spirit and her aver- 
sion for their Idumean relatives. They ridi- 
culed the senile vanity of the old king, and when 
they saw the inferior wives who had succeeded 
their mother wearing her gowns, they openly 
boasted that they would one day make these fine 
ladies wear sackcloth instead. Their impru- 
dence roused the suspicion of Herod and in- 
volved them in endless quarrels with Salome and 
their wicked elder brother, Antipater, whose 
poisonous influence increased the bitter resent- 
ment of their unhappy father. Quarrels and 
reconciliations followed each other in rapid suc- 
cession for eleven years. Then the pride and 
affection of Herod gave way before the charge 
of treason brought against his sons by the mis- 
chief-makers, and just thirty years from the date 
of Mariamne's marriage, her sons were con- 
demned and strangled at Samaria, where her 
wedding had taken place. 

In B. c. 4, the wicked old king, steeped in lust 
and cruelty, hated by his subjects and distrusted 
by the members of his own family, became the 
victim of a foul distemper, and the sulphur baths 
of Callirrhoe afforded him no r'elief. When all 



140 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

hope of his recovery had been relinquished, he 
commanded that the most distinguished men of 
the nation be shut up in the arena and cut down 
on the day of his death. Thus only could he 
hope that real lamentation would occur at his 
own funeral. Unloved and unmourned, he died 
at Jericho, the sad wreck of what he might 
have been, and his body was borne to Herodium 
for interment. 

The tempestuous tragedy of Herod and Mari- 
amne, vivid with its lightning flashes of love, 
jealousy, hatred and remorse, has been made the 
subject of plays and poems, but none perhaps 
more true to its real spirit than "Herod's La- 
ment for Mariamne," in which Lord Byron de- 
picts the distracted king pacing the corridors of 
the desolated castle at Samaria forever haunted 
by the beauty and innocence of his murdered 
wife. 

Oh Mariamne! now for thee 

The heart for which thou bled'st is bleeding; 

Revenge is lost in agony 

And wild remorse to rage succeeding. 

Oh Mariamne! where art thou? 

Thou canst not hear my bitter pleading; 

Ah ! couldst thou — thou wouldst pardon now, 

Though Heaven were to my prayer unheeding. 

And is she dead? — and did they dare 
Obey my frenzy's jealous raving? 



HEROD THE GREAT 141 

My wrath but doomed my own despair; 

The sword that smote her 's o'er me waving, — 

But thou art cold, my murdered love! 

And this dark heart is vainly craving 

For her who soars alone above, 

And leaves my soul unworthy saving. 

She's gone who shared my diadem, 
She sank, with her my joys entombing; 
I swept that flower from Judah's stem 
Whose leaves for me alone were blooming; 
And mine's the guilt and mine's the hell 
This bosom's desolation dooming; 
And I have earned those tortures well, 
Which unconsumed are still consuming. 

The turbulent discontent which was partially- 
concealed by the outward brilliance and pros- 
perity of Herod's reign, was prevented from 
bursting into open rebellion only by the stringent 
rule of the old king. A large army of mercen- 
aries and strong garrisons scattered throughout 
Palestine, kept the dissatisfied populace in sub- 
jection; and when in the latter period of his reign, 
more severe action became necessary, a ban was 
placed upon assemblies; even loitering upon the 
street was forbidden, and the spies of the hated 
Idumean went constantly to and fro among the 
people, he himself sometimes masquerading 
among them in the dress of a common citizen. 

Yet many of his measures contributed to the 
safety and welfare of his subjects. Galilee, for- 



142 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

merly the hiding-place of brigands, was colon- 
ized; travel and commerce was protected, and 
the buildings erected by him were many of them 
useful as well as beautiful. He even made spas- 
modic attempts to win the good will of his sub- 
jects, twice remitting a large fraction of the 
heavy taxes by which they were oppressed, and 
in time of famine selling the plate from his own 
table that he might relieve their distress. 

In Pharisaism, with which he had no real sym- 
pathy, he recognized a power which could not be 
crushed, and consequently rendered an insincere 
homage to the religious scruples of the sect. 
None of the statues repugnant to the Jews were 
placed upon any of the public buildings erected 
by him in Jerusalem; he made no attempt to 
enter the inner court of the temple forbidden to 
Gentiles; and the Pharisees, who boldly refused 
to take the oath of allegiance to the Roman em- 
peror and himself, were excused from punish- 
ment. But the milder features of his reign did 
not counteract the despotism with which he di- 
vested the Sanhedrin of all real power and ap- 
pointed and removed high priests at will; or his 
preference for pagan surroundings and the men 
of Greek culture, upon whom he conferred the 
public offices of his kingdom, openly boasting that 
he was more nearly related to the Greeks than 
to the Jews. 



HEROD THE GREAT 143 

Herod worshipped no God save his own am- 
bition, and the power of Rome. To the latter, 
he yielded implicit obedience. Even when he 
was compelled by Antony to bestow the fair and 
fertile region about Jericho with its balsams and 
palm trees upon Cleopatra, he paid taxes upon 
his own land without complaint; and when the 
Egyptian queen came to inspect his gift, she was 
cordially received and royally entertained. His 
friendship and admiration for the Romans was 
quite sincere, and his relations with Augustus 
and Agrippa were so intimate that his flatterers 
affirmed that "Herod was dearest to Augustus 
next to Agrippa and to Agrippa next to 
Augustus." 

He adopted the Greek customs and forms of 
culture affected by his Roman friends, and votive 
offerings to the Roman emperors transformed 
the face of Palestine. Roman baths, fountains, 
gymnasiums, and amphitheatres were built in 
Jerusalem and many other cities of Judea; the 
games distasteful to the Jews were celebrated 
every fourth year in honor of the Roman em- 
peror; Samaria was rebuilt and named Sebaste 
"the August" in honor of Augustus, Herod's pa- 
tron; and like Augustus, the "King of the Jews" 
"found brick and left marble" in his capital. In 
B. c. 24, he erected in Jerusalem a beautiful 
palace of marble and gold for himself. Three 



144 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

massive towers whose bases, built from huge 
blocks of smooth stone, rendered them almost 
invincible, rose from its walls; of these, one was 
named for his friend Hippicus, one for his favor- 
ite brother Phasael, and one, the most costly 
and richly ornamented of the three, for his best- 
loved wife, Mariamne. 

A yet more ambitious undertaking was the 
founding of the seaport Caesarea at the base of 
the ancient Straton's tower. Its harbor was pro- 
tected by a powerful breakwater, and a great 
temple to Augustus, which could be seen far out 
upon the Mediterranean, overlooked the smaller 
houses of shining marble by which it was sur- 
rounded. Twelve years were occupied in build- 
ing this city, which at a later date quite outshone 
Jerusalem and was made the capitol of Judea. 

The members of Herod's own family were also 
honored with costly and lasting memorials. 
Where Capharsaba had stood, rose the city of 
Antipatris in honor of his father; at Jericho, a 
newly erected citadel bore the name of his mother 
Cypros ; and north of Jericho, a city named Phas- 
aelis for his best-loved brother, sprang into exis- 
tence. On the spot where his desperate conflict 
with the Jews had occurred when he fled from 
Parthian invaders, he built a fortress named 
Herodium, which contained beautiful apartments 
for his own use, and another fortress in the 



HEROD THE GREAT 145 

mountainous region toward Arabia also bore his 
name. The strongholds of Judea were fortified 
afresh, and in the non-Jewish cities of Palestine 
and nearer Spain, he erected heathen temples 
which he dedicated to the Roman emperors. 
But the results of Herod's passion for building 
extended far beyond the boundaries of Palestine, 
even to Athens and Lacedaemonia, for in many 
of the cities through which he travelled, he left 
baths, colonnades, fountains, and public build- 
ings, as proofs of his interest and generosity. 

Partly to gratify his own ambition, and partly 
to conciliate the people he governed, Herod 
began in B. c. 20 the greatest and most mag- 
nificent of all his public works, the construction of 
a temple so beautiful that "he who has not seen 
Herod's building has never seen anything beauti- 
ful" was a common saying among the Jews. 
When his plan was first made known to his sub- 
jects, his unsavory reputation and the sacred 
character of the edifice with which he wished to 
tamper presented objections which were not 
easily overcome. The oral tradition prescribed 
that an old synagogue must not be destroyed until 
a new one had been built to take its place, and the 
scribes declared that the same rule must be ob- 
served in regard to the temple. This hindrance 
was obliterated by the wily suggestion of an old 
Rabbi whose counsel Herod sought. He saw a 



146 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

breach in the building which made its repair 
necessary, and the entire process of reconstruc- 
tion was carried on under the pretext of needed 
repairs. Not once was the worship of the 
people interrupted, and the religious scruples of 
the Pharisees were respected by Herod in every 
way. Among the ten thousand laborers em- 
ployed in the work were a thousand priests who 
had been trained as masons and carpenters that 
the more sacred parts of the edifice might not 
be touched by profane hands; and the enormous 
stones of which the building was to be composed 
were dragged to the top of the mountain by a 
thousand wagons. The temple itself was 
finished in eighteen months, but the forecourts 
were not entirely completed until thirty years 
after the crucifixion. 

The difficulty of placing an enclosure which 
was to accomodate 210,000 people upon the 
somewhat narrow summit of the Temple Mount 
was very great, although its area had already 
been much enlarged by the Asmonean kings. 
Sub-structures of solid masonry supported the 
still more extensive courts of the new temple, 
and a terraced plateau, rectangular in shape, 
crowned the Temple Mount. The temple proper 
stood in the north-western and highest portion of 
the plateau, whose sides measuring 927 feet were 
outlined by massive castellated walls which rose 



HEROD THE GREAT 147 

almost perpendicular with the steeply sloping 
sides of the mountain to a height of one hundred 
or one hundred and fifty feet. Within these 
surrounding walls were piazzas or covered prom- 
enades, the most ornate and beautiful of all the 
temple structures. They were paved with mosa- 
ics and their roofs of richly carved woods were 
supported by rows of graceful pillars. The 
most beautiful of these promenacles was the 
southern; the most ancient, Solomon's porch on 
the east. From the covered colonnades one 
might pass into the Court of the Gentiles, where 
stood the space rented by the priests to the 
money-changers, the cattle-dealers, and the sellers 
of pigeons, twice driven from the temple by our 
Lord. On the inner boundary of the Court of 
the Gentiles rose the low wall beyond which no 
foreigner might pass. It was placarded with 
warning inscriptions, one of which, discovered in 
1 87 1, reads as follows: 

No stranger is to enter within the balustrade round 
the Temple and enclosure. Whoever is caught, will be 
responsible to himself for his death, which will ensue. 

Above the Court of the Gentiles rose three 
terraces, the lowest of which was occupied by the 
Court of the Women, the second by the Court 
of the Men and the Court of the Priests, and the 
third and highest by the temple proper. The 
Court of the Women contained besides the two 



148 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

galleries set apart for women, thirteen alms- 
boxes, shaped like inverted trumpets, also recep- 
tacles for wood, oil, wine, salt and other articles 
used by the priests when preparing the sacrifices. 
On festal occasions, it was lighted by the two 
great chandeliers which commemorated the pillar 
of fire by which the children of Israel were led 
through the wilderness and beneath which Christ 
stood when he said, "I am the light of the 
world." The Court of the Men was separated 
from the Court of the Priests by a low rail over 
which the people might see the laver, the great 
brazen altar upon which the sacrifices were off- 
ered, and the door which opened into the "Cham- 
ber of Squares," the assembly-room of the San- 
hedrin. These courts were entered through huge 
gates, profusely ornamented with plates of gold 
and silver, of which the eastern, or "Gate Beauti- 
ful" sometimes called Nicanor's gate, was most 
generally used. It was covered with Corinthian 
brass and so massive that to close and bar it, 
twenty men must be employed each evening. 

The temple proper was built from a white 
limestone which resembled marble. It was 
adorned with shining plates of gold, and its roof 
bristled with rows of golden spikes. Its porch 
was beautified by the golden vine, emblematic of 
Palestine, to which each pilgrim added a grape 
or cluster of gold. Within was the Holy Place 



HEROD THE GREAT 149 

and the mysterious Holy of Holies, separated 
from each other by a curtain of Babylonian tap- 
estry; the former containing the table of shew- 
bread, and the golden candlestick with seven 
branches ; the latter entirely empty except for the 
stone on which the high priest laid his censer. 

The pride of the Jews in the magnificent struc- 
ture is reflected in the following eulogy by Jose- 
phus: 

"Now the outward face of the temple in its 
front wanted nothing that was likely to surprise 
either men's minds or their eyes ; for it was cov- 
ered all over with plates of gold of great weight 
and at the first rising of the sun reflected back 
a very fiery splendor, and made those who forced 
themselves to look upon it to turn their eyes away, 
just as they would have done at the sun's own 
rays. But this temple appeared to strangers, 
when they were at a distance, like a mountain 
covered with snow, for, as to those parts of it 
that were not gilt, they were exceeding white." 

Forty days before the death of Herod, if the 
date assigned by modern critics to the birth of 
our Saviour is correct,* the uneasy mind of the 

*The date of Christ's birth is uncertain. Hastings reckon- 
ing from Herod's death in 4 B. c, which according to Matthew, 
took place not long after Christ's birth, and from John II, 20, 
probably uttered in the second year of Christ's ministry when 
he was thirty-one years of age, fixes upon 5 b. c. as a probable 
date. The Brittanica puts the date still earlier in 7-6 b. c. 
Varying dates anywhere from 7-2 B. c. are suggested by other 
authorities. 



150 THE ROMAN PERIOD 

old king was troubled by vague rumors of a por- 
tentous star in the east, and of wise men and 
shepherds worshipping at the shrine of a won- 
derful child-king ; and lest the new-comer become 
the possessor of the splendor upon which he had 
lavished untiring energy, he issued a decree 
that all the babes in his kingdom under two years 
of age be put to death. It was indeed true that 
the Palestine beautified by Herod was to be the 
home of a King far greater than any other who 
ever reigned upon this earth, and that the great- 
est work of the Idumean king was to be' immor- 
talized by the words and deeds of One who was 
soon to tread its courts. In the kingdom of 
Herod, not long after his death, was to be en- 
acted a scene of unutterable pathos, the coming 
of the long-awaited Saviour to a people upon a 
road so clouded with the dust of their own near- 
sighted sophistry and self-satisfaction and so 
noisy with the blatant rumbling of their own 
carnal ideals that they could not see His beauty 
nor hear the voice of Jehovah in the words He 
uttered. Yet there were a few simple and sincere 
souls, a Nathanael, a Mary, a Lazarus, who be- 
held Him with clear eyes, and believed that "In 
Him was life ; and the life was the light of men." 



PART IV 
DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 



CHAPTER IX 

THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON AND 
THE TALMUD 

When the children of Israel emerge from the 
dimly lighted centuries of Apocryphal history 
into the clear day of the New Testament, we 
behold a race whose soul has been molded and 
scarred by the perils and vicissitudes of the way, 
Grim encounters with famine, war, and perse- 
cution have left their impress upon Jewish char- 
acter, as have also the subtle temptations of 
material prosperity and of intimate contact with 
the Greek and Roman masters of the world, but 
throughout all the changing fortunes of the race, 
its vital center, the heart which has controlled the 
pulsations of its distinctive and peculiar life, has 
been the law established five hundred years before 
the coming of Christ. Ever since the fateful 
day when Ezra read the sacred scrolls before the 
assembled Jewish people and they made a solemn 
covenant to do its bidding, it had been recognized 
as canonical, that is, as the binding rule of daily 
life. To obey it faithfully meant righteousness 

153 



154 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

and the service of God; no sin could be graver 
or more profane than the neglect of its slightest 
detail. Not only its commands, but every word 
which it contained was believed to be the result 
of divine inspiration. "He who asserts that the 
Torah is not from heaven has no part in the 
future world," and "He who says that Moses 
wrote even one word of his own knowledge is a 
denier and despiser of the word of God" were 
revered decisions of the Jewish rabbis. "The 
whole Pentateuch was regarded as dictated by 
God, as prompted by the Spirit of God. Even 
the last eight verses of Deuteronomy in which 
the death of Moses is related, were said to have 
been written by Moses himself by means of divine 
dictation. Nay, at last, the view of a divine 
dictation was no longer sufficient. The complete 
book of the law was declared to have been hancled 
to Moses by God and it was only disputed whether 
God delivered the whole Torah to Moses at 
once or by volumes." 

The law which was read by Ezra to the chil- 
dren of Israel consisted only of the first five 
books of our Old Testament; the sacred writings 
of the subjects of Herod the Great were divided 
into three groups. 

The Law (or Torah) 

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deut- 
eronomy. 



THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON 155 

The Prophets (or Nabii) 
Early Prophets 

Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings. 
Later Prophets 

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel. The Twelve 
Minor Prophets, Hosea to Malachi. 
The Writings (Hagiographa or Kethubim) 

(a) The poetical books 
Psalms, Proverbs, Job 

(b) The Migilloth or Rolls 

Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, 
Ecclesiastes, Esther. 

(c) Historical books 

Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles. 

Of these, the Torah was regarded with 
greatest reverence. Its antiquity and the tradition 
of its divine origin may have given it a higher 
place in the esteem of the Jews than books which 
would seem to us to have a greater spiritual 
value, as the Psalms or the prophecies of Hosea 
and Isaiah; or with its double thread of narra- 
tive and law, inspiring history and definite rules 
for daily conduct, it may have been better adapted 
to meet the primitive spiritual needs of the Jewish 
nation. 

In 432 B. c, the Pentateuch was the only part 
of our Bible recognized as sacred and the books 
of the prophets were preserved only on account of 
their literary merit; but, at a later date, when 



156 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

the people, who so violently hated and opposed 
the prophets of their own generation, had passed 
away and the truth and value of their writings 
had been tested and proved throughout the 
troubled days of the exile and the equally trying 
days of the return, there was a growing convic- 
tion that these men had been the servants and 
mouthpiece of God. The priests began to read 
the prophetic writings in the synagogue, and by 
200 B. c, they had been admitted to the Canon. 
It is impossible to say why the Writings were 
so long excluded from the Canon or Just when 
their admittance took place. The dates assigned 
by authorities to their origin sheds no light upon 
the subject for although, in the opinion of many 
scholars, some of the books of this group, as 
Daniel and Ecclesiastes, were not written until 
the second century B. C, others antedate the 
books of the later prophets. It is probably true 
of some of the writings that they were not col- 
lected and edited till long after their foundation 
had been laid. The Psalter, for instance, could 
not have assumed its present form earlier than 
sometime in the first century B. C, more than nine 
hundred years after the first Psalms were written 
by David, if, as the context would lead us to 
suppose, the latest Psalms were the product 
of the Maccabean period. The slow formation 
of the Psalter and the fact that it was 



THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON 157 

the hymnal of the temple service may account 
for its long exclusion; and the probation of other 
books of this group, Esther, Ecclesiastes, and 
the Song of Solomon, was probably lengthened 
by the character of their contents, for their divine 
inspiration is still sometimes questioned by sin- 
cere Christians and they have made a less certain 
appeal to the spiritual perception of men of all 
generations than other books of the Old Testa- 
ment. By the first century of the Christian era, 
however, all the Writings except Ecclesiastes 
and the Song of Solomon had crept into the 
exclusive circle of Jewish scripture ; and after the 
admission of these two laggards, which did not 
occur before the second century A. D., the Hebrew 
makers of the Canon, less generous but more dis- 
criminating than their Alexandrian brethern, 
permanantly closed its doors to all newcomers, 
and the Old Testament assumed the form which 
it bears today. 

When the Jews first tried to regulate their 
daily conduct by the laws of Deuteronomy and 
Leviticus, they experienced even greater difficulty 
than would a citizen of the United States should 
he attempt to govern the details of his daily life 
by the rules of our American statute books. 
Many of the Jews could not read the law and 
those who could, did not understand how to apply 
it to the exigencies of daily life. No law could 



158 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

have been complete enough to touch upon all the 
trivial points it was supposed to govern and many 
cases occurred to which it was impossible or in- 
convenient to apply its precepts in their original 
form. It needed interpretation and elaboration. 

At first the explanation of the law was the task 
of the priests, but as it became more and more 
the center about which Jewish life revolved, 
learned Hebrews became professional scribes 
or lawyers and devoted their lives to the study 
of its maxims. Schools were established at 
Jerusalem and in other Jewish settlements 
where the law was the subject of endless and 
wearisome discussion. Each mandate was di- 
vided and subdivided again and again to meet the 
most trivial happenings of daily life, and innu- 
merable absurd and petty rules were the result. 

The decisions of the scribes, like the decisions of 
our own Supreme Courts, formed a law of pre- 
cedent or custom, and were called Halacha. 
There was a tradition that Moses, after present- 
ing each of the twelve tribes of Israel with a 
copy of the Pentateuch, had repeated an oral law 
four times to the assembled people. This tradi- 
tion divided the Halacha into two classes, the 
oral precepts handed down from Moses, which 
were regarded with greatest reverence and the 
oral laws springing from the discussions of the 
scribes which became established only when a 



THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON 159 

majority of the learned had agreed upon their 
acknowledgment. All the Halacha, no matter 
how entirely they differed from the original man- 
dates, were believed to spring from the laws of 
the Torah, and thirteen rules laid down by the 
Rabbis for demonstrating the law were regarded 
with such reverence that orthodox Hebrews 
repeated them daily as a part of their morning 
devotions. 

As religion was the one absorbing interest of 
the Jews, the scribes occupied themselves more 
with the discussion of the laws which controlled 
their worship of God than with civil and criminal 
laws, the observance of the Sabbath and the rules 
of cleanness and uncleanness forming beyond all 
others, fruitful subjects for boundless discussion. 

The superstitious and trifling character of these 
debates is illumined by the dispute between the 
'Pharisees and Sadducees in regard to touching the 
holy books. It was ordained by the scribes that 
anyone who had touched the holy books should not 
eat the truma or first-fruits until he had first 
washed his hands. They made this rule because the 
sacred scrolls laid carefully away in times of per- 
secution, might have been gnawed by rats and 
thus rendered unclean. Therefore if a Jew 
had touched any one of the sacred books except 
Ecclesiastes, which was deemed less holy than the 
rest, he might not partake of the first-fruits until 



160 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

his hands were washed. As a result of this mo- 
mentous decision, which was ridiculed by the 
Sadducees, the terms "defile the hands" and ^can- 
onical" became synonomous in Rabbinical schools. 

But the Rabbis did not confine their research 
to the law. The narrative with which it was 
interwoven must also be placed beneath the mag- 
nifying glass of Jewish prejudice. To fender the 
mercies of God to his chosen people more mar- 
vellous and to cast a glamour over the heroes of 
their race, they gave their imagination free rein 
and did not hestitate to grossly exaggerate his- 
toric facts or to create wild legends and ficti- 
tious events. Genesis and Exodus were rewritten 
and elaborated, and we are told that Abraham 
instructed the King of Egypt in astrology, that 
the Egyptians owed their civilization to the teach- 
ings of Moses and that alphabetical writing was 
invented by him. The Israelites when passing 
through the wilderness were not furnished with 
water from a rock once, but a miraculous spring 
bubbling from a great stone accompanied them 
throughout their entire journey. 

The more action was restricted by the rigid 
rules of the Halacha, the greater freedom was 
afforded Jewish fancy by the myths of the Hag- 
gadah Angelology and demonology became preva- 
lent; Bible scenes, personages, and even God 
himself were degraded by the coarse and profane 



THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON 161 

creations of the scribes, the Almighty and His 
angels being formed by them into a kind of 
heavenly Sanhedrin which occasionally required 
the aid of an earthly Rabbi. 

The legends and exaggerations of the scribes 
were called Haggadah and with the Halacha, 
formed the basis of the Talmud. 

For a century, the oral tradition was trans- 
mitted from one generation to another entirely 
by word of mouth as it was feared that its unity 
of development might s-uffer should each teacher 
commit his own version to writing. The Rabbis 
repeated it over and over to their pupils and 
they in turn memorized it by numerous repetitions. 
When, however, the Jews were scattered and 
threatened with extinction after the fall of 
Jerusalem, the principles which were most fre- 
quently subjects of discussion were collected and 
codified by Rabbi Jehudah, who feared they might 
be irretrievably lost unless they were committed 
to writing. This code was completed toward the 
end of the second century after Christ and was 
called the Mishna. Its contents were Halachic. 
It was divided into six orders or classes which 
were again divided into sixty tracts or treatises. 
The treatises were divided into chapters and the 
chapters into paragraphs called mishnas, that is, 
mixtures or miscellanies. The first class con- 
tained laws relating to seeds and products of 



162 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

the fields; the second, laws relating to festival 
celebrations; the third, laws relating to women; 
the fourth, civil and criminals laws, as deposits, 
usuries, rents, arrests, sales and purchases; the 
fifth, laws governing sacrifices and vows; the 
sixth, laws of cleanness and uncleanness. 

Throughout the third and fourth centuries 
A. D. the principles embodied in the Mishna 
were discussed in the schools of Palestine with 
unwearied energy and the Gemara or opinions of 
the scribes were also committed to writing. The 
Gemara, meaning complement or perfection, was 
united with the Mishna and the result was the 
Jerusalem Talmud. 

The Mishna was carried to Babylon by a pupil 
of Rabbi Jehudah and there became the founda- 
tion of the Babylonian Talmud, a book more 
highly valued and four times as bulky as its 
Palestinian predecessor. The extreme length 
and wearisome detail of both volumes may be 
conjectured from the fact that the discussion of 
the fifth and sixth Sedars were never reached in 
either, the Palestinian Talmud containing the 
elaboration of thirty-nine tracts and the Baby- 
lonian of thirty-six and one-half. 

The Talmud received even greater respect and 
reverence from the Jews than the Torah. They 
compared the Pentateuch to water and the Tal- 
mud to wine. Of the twelve hours of which the 



THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON 163 

day was composed, they declared that God em- 
ployed nine to study the Talmud and only three 
to read the written law; and the reading of the 
Hagiographa in the synagogue was -forbidden 
lest it divert the attention of the people from the 
discourses of the Rabbis. But to non-Jewish 
and modern scholars, this repository of Jewish 
wisdom presents the aspect of a vast ocean in 
whose muddy depths there are few pearls, a 
dreary desert with only an occasional oasis. 
It is pre-eminently a statute book; but besides 
laws and explanations of laws hopelessly en- 
tangled with Jewish ideas of morality and re- 
ligion, it contains treatises on education, ethics, 
mathematics, medicine, botany, zoology, astron- 
omy, and geography with biographical sketches 
of the Jewish scholars who wrote them ; and be- 
neath its distorted mask of prejudice and super- 
stition rest genuine features of Jewish history. 

A few beautiful and noble sayings in which the 
Rabbis found a pretext for diminishing the origin- 
ality of Jesus may be gleaned from its innu- 
merable pages. Among them are the following: 

Love peace and pursue it at any cost. 

Remember that it is better to be persecuted than to 

persecute. 

He who giveth alms in secret is greater than Moses 

himself. 
It is better to utter a short prayer with devotion than 

a long one without fervor. 



164 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

The following is an extract from Canon Far- 
rar's criticism of the Talmud : 

"The language of the Talmud is uncouth, 
corrupt and often unintelligible, and nothing can 
be conceived more unprofitable and tedious than 
its confused and desultory wrangles teeming with 
contradictions and mistakes. Lightfoot, than 
whom no scholar has a better right to speak, says 
that the 'almost unconquerable difficulty of the 
style, the frightful roughness of the language, and 
the amazing emptiness and sophistry of the mat- 
ters handled do torture, vex, and tire him who 
reads.' " 



CHAPTER X 

SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 

After the exile, the Jews, except for a compar- 
atively short period of independence, were the 
subjects of foreign powers who cared nothing for 
their religious laws and customs. Even their 
native Asmonean monarchs were, with one or 
two exceptions, Sadducees who ridiculed the oral 
tradition and made the rules of the Torah sub- 
servient to political advancement. If therefore 
the law was to be enforced and practiced, it must 
be propped into its high and central position by 
public sentiment and careful education. The 
former was created by the scribes whose influence 
over the people was almost unlimited. 

u Let your house be a house of assembly for 
those wise in the law; let yourself be dusted by 
the dust of their feet, and drink eagerly their 
teaching" ; 

"He who in walking repeats the law to himself, 
but interrupts himself, and exclaims 'How 
beautiful is this tree! How beautiful is this 
field!' the Scripture will impute it to him as 
though he had forfeited his life"; 

165 



166 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

U A bastard who knows the law takes prece- 
dence of the high priest if he is ignorant"; are 
samples of the sayings with which they kin- 
dled the enthusiasm of their followers. 

According to the oral tradition, it was Moses 
who first prescribed that boys should learn the 
most important laws and commanded the people 
to instruct their children in reading and writing 
that they might know the deeds of their fore- 
fathers and walk according to the holy laws. 
This, like many other bits of Haggadic wisdom, 
is only a flight of Rabbinical fancy, although it 
is impossible to read the book of Proverbs with- 
out being led to believe that the Jews set a high 
value upon education at a very early date. It 
was not, however, until Ezra and Nehemiah had 
made the law the prime factor in the religion of 
Israel, that, in the words of Wellhausen, piety 
and education became inseparable, the community 
became a school, and the Bible a spelling-book. 

At first the instruction of the children was the 
task of the father and mother and home teaching 
made a knowledge of reading more widely dis- 
tributed than might be supposed. Even in the 
Maccabean period, copies of the law are men- 
tioned as the property of private individuals, 
# (I Mace, i, 56,) a fact which would presup- 
pose an ability to read on the part of their own- 
ers. The culture of Alexandria doubtless had a 



SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 167 

stimulating effect upon Jewish learning, for ac- 
cording to Josephus, the tax-farmer Joseph sent 
his sons there to be educated during the reign of 
the Ptolemies; and a new impulse to education 
was probably received from Hellenism and from 
such sages as Jesus, the Son of Sirach.* 

To make instruction in the law more thorough 
and more general, elementary schools for boys 
were finally established in every town and prov- 
ince of Palestine. The date when these schools 
first sprang into existence is wrapped in obscurity. 
It is thought by some critics that a school for 
boys may have entered Jerusalem with the first 
gymnasium in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes ; 
and the tradition which tells us that Simon ben 
Shetach made attendance upon the elementary 
schools compulsory would assume the existence 
of at least scattered elementary schools in his 
day, if the halo with which the Pharisees sur- 
round the golden age of Alexandra did not 
render the many legends which gather about her 
reign of a doubtful character. Later traditions 
which cannot be ignored make the existence of 
public schools, in the first century of the Christ- 
ian era, a certainty and indicate that they un- 
doubtedly became a regular and established in- 
stitution a century later. Legal decisions in 

* Jos. Ant. XII, iv, 6, implies that schools on the Greek Model 
had been established in Jerusalem before B.C. 220. 



168 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

regard to teachers are found in the Mishna, and 
Jewish annals record the decree made by Joshua 
ben Gamla (Jesus the son of Gamaliel) who 
was high priest about 63-65 A. D., that teachers 
of boys be appointed in every town and province 
and that children at the age of six or seven, be 
compelled to attend their classes. 

Josephus who lived in the first century of the 
Christian era, boasts of being so well acquainted 
wit'h the rules of Torah in his fourteenth year 
that the high priest and elders of Jerusalem came 
to him for information. He also speaks in 
glowing terms of the enthusiasm shown in the 
instruction of young children. "We take most 
pains of all," he says, "with the instruction of 
children, and esteem the observation of the 
laws and the piety corresponding with them the 
most important affair of our whole lives. If 
anyone should question one of us concerning the 
laws, he would more easily repeat them all than 
his own name. Since we learn them from our 
first consciousness, we have them, as it were, en- 
graven on our souls; and a transgression is rare, 
but the averting of punishment impossible." 

A room in the synagogue was reserved for a 
school-room and the minister or Hazan was also 
the instructor of the children. Boys entered 
school when they were six years of age. They 
were instructed in reading, writing, and the 



SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 169 

simplest elements of arithmetic. Their first 
text book was a roll of scripture and their first 
lesson a verse from Leviticus. After the letters 
were mastered, the child learned the verse by 
heart, repeating it over and over again. Con- 
stant repetition played an important part in 
Jewish education, and the school-room was con- 
stantly filled with a confused babel of voices, for 
"was there not once a pupil who learned his task 
without repeating the words aloud and in con- 
sequence forgot all he had learned in three 
years?" After the verse was perfectly memo- 
rized, the teacher copied it and taught the pupil 
to recognize the words it contained. 

The children were taught to write upon a sherd 
of pottery and were later promoted to wax tab- 
lets upon which they formed letters with a 
pointed style or metal instrument. It was not 
until they had become proficient that they were 
allowed to try their skill on the costly papyrus 
from which the scrolls were made. Only a few 
boys who wished to become sages or scribes con- 
tinued their education after completing the 
course furnished by the elementary schools, and 
as there were no schools for girls, they were 
taught by their mothers at home. 

From their earliest years, the young Jews 
must practice the law as well as learn its theory. 
They were instructed in the observance of the 



170 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

Sabbath at a tender age, and were gradually 
accustomed to the prescribed fasts. As soon as 
boys were able to walk, their fathers were urged 
to lead or carry them to the feasts at the temple, 
especially to the Feast of Tabernacles. When a 
grandson was born to Shammai, the famous 
Pharisee, on the Day of Atonement, he left the 
roof of his daughter-in-law's chamber open and 
covered the bed with branches in his zeal to ob- 
serve the precept given in the Mishna, "A boy 
who is capable of shaking the lubab is bound to 
keep it," that is, the Feast of Tabernacles. 

The minority of a Jewish boy had passed when 
he reached the age of twelve or thirteen years; 
the duties and privileges of every grown 
Israelite were his; and the school was superseded 
by the synagogue. 

The synagogue was the herald which proclaimed 
the message of Judaism not only throughout Pal- 
estine, but in every remote town or city of the 
dispersion. A demand for houses of worship 
where the law might be read and studied was 
created by Ezra and Nehemiah, and although 
the Rabbis invested the synagogue with dignity 
by ascribing its origin to the command of Moses, 
there is no evidence of its existence until after 
the return. The eighth verse of Psalm seventy- 
four, which was probably written in the Macca- 
bean period, contains the first reference to the 



SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 171 

synagogue found in the Bible, and with papyrus 
finds of recent years indicates that their existence 
had become quite general by the latter half of 
the second century before Christ, although their 
origin may be ascribed to an earlier date.* As 
early as the third century before Christ where- 
ever there was a settlement of Jews, they formed 
themselves into a congregation, and a synagogue 
was built generally by the free contributions of 
the people, sometimes by the generosity of one 
wealthy man. One synagogue was found in 
every small Jewish town and many more in 
Jewish cities, although the tradition that there 
were four hundred and eighty in Jerusalem is 
doubtless an exaggeration. 

To render these emissaries of Judaism more 
conspicuous, the Rabbis commanded that they 
be built upon the highest point of land in the 
town and that a tall pole rise from their roofs. 
This command must often have been disregarded, 
for the ruins of old synagogues found in Galilee 
are situated in the lower parts of the town; and 
their entrances which, according to the Rabbin- 
ical requirements, should have been on the west, 
are situated at the south so that each Jew as he 
entered, would be obliged to turn his back toward 

* Not a few references to the synagogues of the Jewish com- 
munities in Egypt from the time of Ptolemy Euergetes (247- 
221 B.C.) onwards have been discovered on ancient manu- 
scripts in recent years. 



172 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

the holy city. Sometimes locations on the banks 
of streams or lakes were chosen that the wor- 
shippers might have a convenient place in which 
to perform the ablutions necessary before en- 
tering; and sometimes reverence for a holy man 
who had passed away, was expressed by the 
erection of a house of prayer near his tomb. 

The form and size of the synagogue differed 
with the size and wealth of its congregation. 
Ruins still extant prove that they were almost 
always rectangular in shape with the largest di- 
mension running north and south. The walls 
were formed from blocks of native limestone 
"chiselled" into each other without mortar, the 
floors were paved with the same white stone, and 
the roofs were thickly covered with earth to keep 
out the intense heat. The interior was divided 
into aisles by rows of columns, and the entrances 
were three in number, one large door opening in- 
to the central aisle and a smaller one on each 
side. The space over the doors was ornamented 
with appropriate figures in sculpture, the golden 
candlestick, the pot of manna, the paschal lamb 
or the vine. Synagogues were sometimes dis- 
tinguished from each other by special emblems. 
In Sepphoris there was the synagogue of the vine 
and in Rome the synagogue of the olive tree. 

The interior of the synagogue was so arranged 
as to recall the interior of the temple at Jeru- 



SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 173 

salem. A sunken place used for a porch corres- 
ponded to the forecourts of the temple, and an 
elevated place near the center of the room where 
the reading desk stood, in some measure, to the 
altar. The recess in which the sacred scrolls 
were kept was typical of the Holy of Holies, and 
the curtain which enclosed it, of the veil which 
separated that mysterious chamber from the Holy 
place. The scrolls were carefully wrapped in 
several covers of silk and linen, which were some- 
times embroidered and ornamented with little 
bells, or, if the means of the worshippers per- 
mitted it, adorned with silver and gold. In front 
of this closet, hung an ever-burning lamp symbolic 
of the eternal fire of the altar and beside it, an 
eight branched candlestick shaped like the golden 
candlestick of the Holy place. 

The elders of the synagogue sat on raised cush- 
ions in the chief seats next the recess and the 
people stood or sat on the floor facing them. 
Men and women were separated by a lattice and 
sat with their backs to each other. In wealthier 
congregations, a gallery was built for the women, 
but they were always placed where they could not 
be seen by the men of the congregation. 
Men of the same trade sat together and 
if there was a leper among the worshippers, a 
space was set apart for him. The trombone and 
trumpets with which the Hazan, standing on the 



174 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

roof of the synagogue, announced the advent of 
Sabbaths and feast days, were kept at his own 
house. 

Synagogues were set apart by a prayer of ded- 
ication and were regarded with great reverence 
by the people. If deserted, they must not be used 
for baths, tanneries, or laundries. The passerby 
must not take refuge from the sun or wind in a 
synagogue or go through it to shorten his way. 

The chief authorities of these houses of prayer 
were a council of elders who, in strictly Jewish 
localities, were also the political authorities of 
the place. They enforced the law by pronounc- 
ing a sentence of excommunication upon of- 
fenders, a ban which excluded the culprits either 
permanently or temporarily from the congre- 
gation, and was accompanied in extreme cases by 
the dreaded anathema or publicly pronounced 
curse. They also looked out for the poor and 
strangers, and had a general oversight of the 
affairs of the synagogue. 

Besides the elders, various officers were ap- 
pointed to discharge especial duties. A ruler of 
the synagogue, often one of its elders, was chosen 
to supervise its services, that is, to decide who 
should read from the Scripture, preach the ser- 
mon, conduct the prayers, and pronounce the 
benediction. It was also his duty to care for the 
building itself and see that nothing improper 



SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 175 

took place within its precincts. Five receivers 
of alms, two to receive and three to distribute 
offerings, collected money in a box and natural 
products in a dish and gave them to the poor. 

The Hazan or minister must be well-versed in 
the scripture and of irreproachable character. 
He acted as the sexton of the synagogue, bring- 
ing out the scrolls and putting them away, clean- 
ing the lamps and opening and closing the doors. 
In addition to his other duties, he executed sen- 
tences of scourging, often taught the children to 
read, and generally lead the chanting or prayer. 
To guard against empty seats and a congregation 
of less than the required number, the resourceful 
authorities of post-Talmudic times employed ten 
men who were bound by a fee to attend each 
service of the week from beginning to end. 

In every Jewish home, the Sabbath lamp was 
lighted, the best garments put on, and the house 
made ready for the coming of the holy day on 
Friday night. On Saturday morning, the family 
hastened to the synagogue, going quickly and re- 
turning slowly in accordance with the rules of the 
Rabbis. Services were held on the morning and 
evening of the Sabbath and upon Mondays and 
Thursdays, the market days of the Jews. The 
principal features of the Sabbath morning service 
were the recitation of the Shema, the prayer, 
reading from the Thorah, reading from the pro- 



176 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

phets, and the benediction. At least seven 
members of the congregation were appointed by 
the ruler of the synagogue to take part in the serv- 
ice each Sabbath. During the prayer and the 
recitation of the Shema, which was the Jewish 
confession of faith and consisted of certain 
passages from Deuteronomy and .Number,* 
the people stood with their faces turned toward 
the Holy of Holies and the leader stood in front 
of the recess where the rolls of scripture were 
kept, the congregation making only certain re- 
sponses during the prayer. This portion of the 
service was followed by readings of not less 
than three verses each from the Torah, which 
in the Mishna was divided into one hundred and 
fifty-four sections, so that, by reading one section 
each Sabbath, the whole might be finished in three 
years. After the reading from the Pentateuch, 
one person who might select any passage he chose, 
read from the prophets, and as the people no 
longer understood the Hebrew in which the 
sacred books were written, a translator was em- 
ployed who translated each verse as soon as it 
was read, into the Aramaic dialect. Some mem- 
ber of the congregation, preferably a priest or 
Levite, next gave an edifying discourse upon the 
portion which had been read. One of these ser- 
mons preserved in the Talmud was upon the text 

*Deut. vi, 4-9; xi, 13-21 and Num. xv, 37-41. 



SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 177 

"He hath clothed me with the garments of sal- 
vation," and may illustrate their characteristics. 
"There are seven garments which the Holy 
One, blessed be His name, has put on since the 
world began or will put on before the hour when 
He will visit with His wrath the godless Edom. 
When He created the world, He clothed Himself 
in honor and glory for it says : 'Thou* art clothed 
with honor and glory.' When He showed Him- 
self at the Red Sea, He clothed Himself in maj- 
esty, for it says: 'The Lord reigneth, He is 
clothed in majesty.' When He gave the law, He 
clothed Himself with might, for it says : 'Jehovah 
is clothed with might wherewith He hath girded 
Himself. 5 As often as He forgave Israel its 
sins, He clothed Himself in white for it says: 
'His garment was white as snow.' When He 
punishes the nations of the world He puts on the 
garments of vengeance for it says : 'He put on 
the garments of vengeance for clothing and was 
clad with zeal as a cloak.' He will put on the 
sixth robe when the Messiah is revealed. Then 
will He clothe Himself in righteousness for it 
says: 'For he put on righteousness' as a breast- 
plate and an helmet of salvation on His head.' 
He will put on the seventh robe when He punishes 
Edom. Then will He clothe Himself in Adorn 
(red) for it says: Wherefore art thou red in 
thine apparel?' But the robes in which He will 



178 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

clothe the Messiah will shine from one end of 
the world to the other, for it says: 'As a bride- 
groom who is crowned with his turban, like a 
priest/ And the sons of Israel will rejoice in 
His light and will say, 'Blessed be the hour when 
the Messiah was born, blessed the womb which 
bore Him, blessed the eyes which were counted 
worthy to see Him. For the opening of His lips 
is blessing and peace, His speech is rest to the 
soul, the thoughts of His heart confidence and 
joy, the speech of His lips pardon and forgive- 
ness, His prayer like the sweet-smelling savor of 
a sacrifice, His supplications holiness and purity.' 
O how blessed is Israel, for whom such a lot is re- 
served, for it says : 'How great is Thy goodness 
which thou hast laid up for them that fear 
Thee. 1 " 

If a priest were present, he closed the service 
by pronouncing a benediction to which the people 
responded; but a prayer was substituted for the 
benediction if there was no priest among the wor- 
shippers. 

This was the order of service prescribed by 
the Mishna and conscientiously followed in the 
synagogues of Palestine, but in Alexandria and 
other cities of the dispersion, the lesson for the 
Torah was read by one person. A similar but 
shorter order of service was used on the evening 
of the Sabbath and at week-day meetings, when 



SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 179 

only three members of the congregation were 
called upon to take part in the service and the 
Pentateuch alone was read. Every Jewish fes- 
tival was observed by public worship at the syna- 
gogue, and certain passages of scripture pre- 
scribed by the Mishna for special feast days were 
read. 

Besides attending the services of the syna- 
gogue, the men of the congregation must repeat 
the Shema twice daily; and the Shemoneh Esreh 
or nineteen benedictions, a prayer which was in- 
augurated by the great assembly of Ezra, but did 
not assume the form in which it appeared in 
Jewish prayer books until the first century after 
Christ, must be repeated by every Israelite in- 
cluding women, slaves and children, morning, 
afternoon and evening. The rules of the Mishna 
also obliged every Jew to give thanks before and 
after eating and to say certain prayers, upon new 
moons, new years and feast days. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE ABSURDITIES OF LEGALISM 

When the requirements of the Torah had 
been multiplied and remultiplied by the many 
explanations and elaborations of the oral tra- 
dition and the Jews had been trained from in- 
fancy to the mercenary belief that every observ- 
ance or transgression of its precepts met with 
a fitting retribution of reward or punishment, 
both in this world and the final settlement in the 
world to come, piety, so called, necessarily be- 
came an article made to the order of the Rabbis, 
the artificial product of that great machine, the 
law. Natural tendrils of spontaneous good- 
ness were nipped, blossoms of heart and con- 
science dissected by its endless gyrations. A 
man's worship of God, his relation toward his 
heathen neighbors, in fact, nearly every detail of 
Jewish daily life was rendered automatic by its 
compulsory passage between the iron teeth of the 
great machine. 

Every day the conscientious Jew must wend 
his way through a labyrinthine maze of rules and 

180 



ABSURDITIES OF LEGALISM 181 

restrictions, but on the Sabbath, ingenuity and 
learning must be many times redoubled to avoid 
committing deadly sin. Twenty-four chapters of 
the Talmud are devoted to the discussion and 
elaboration of the simple directions for Sabbath 
observance given in the Bible and matters are 
there discussed as of "vital religious importance 
which one could scarcely imagine a sane intellect 
would seriously entertain." 

Bearing a burden upon the Sabbath had been 
forbidden in the Pentateuch (Ex. xxxvi. 6) and 
an endless series of explanations and rules was 
evolved from the original command. The bear- 
ing of a burden was divided into two separate 
acts, picking it up and putting it down. It might 
thus be transferred from a public to a private 
place. A public place and a private place must 
therefore be defined and the exact weight and 
bulk of a burden must also be determined. The 
decision that anything of the weight of a dried fig 
constituted a burden and could not be carried 
from one place to another without desecrating 
the Sabbath only led to the propounding of an- 
other question. If half a fig was carried at two 
different times would the combined acts make the 
perpetrator guilty? By the decree of the 
Rabbis, anything of which practical use could be 
made, even if it weighed less than the prescribed 
half-fig, as two horsehairs from which a bird 



182 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

trap might be constructed, a piece of paper large 
enough for a custom-house notice, enough ink to 
write two letters, or enough wax to fill a small 
hole, was a burden and must not be carried from 
one place to another upon the Sabbath day. 

The command "But the seventh day is the 
sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not 
do any work" was much too general to be satis- 
factory. To determine exactly what work was 
prohibited taxed the time and learning of noted 
scribes and, as a result of their labor, forty less 
one kinds of work are enumerated in the Talmud 
as especially blameworthy. Among them are 
reaping, ploughing, threshing, grinding, baking, 
tying a knot, untying a knot,* sewing two stitches, 
writing two letters, putting out a fire, lighting a 
fire, and carrying from one tenement to another. 
But these restrictions were again much too in- 
definite to meet with the approval of the scribes 
who divided and subdivided them with untiring 
energy. The person who scattered two seeds 
on the Sabbath was accounted guilty of sowing; 
anyone who plucked two ears of corn or even a 
blade of grass had committed the sin of reaping; 
and he who picked up ripe fruit lying beneath a 
tree had twice broken the law by reaping and 
bearing a burden upon the consecrated day. 
After much argument as to the kind of knot 



ABSURDITIES OF LEGALISM 183 

which might legally be tied or untied on the 
Sabbath, it was decided that a woman might tie 
the strings of her cap or girdle, the straps of her 
shoes and sandals, or strings which fastened skins 
of oil or wine; and since it was permissible to tie 
the strings of the girdle, a pail might be tied over 
a well with a girdle, but not with a rope. A knot 
which could be managed with one hand might be 
tied or untied, but tying or untying the knots of 
sailors or camel drivers involved labor and these 
might not legally be touched. 

A set of rules guarding against any possible 
profanation of the Sabbath must be observed by 
every conscientious Israelite before sun-set on 
Friday evening. The tailor was prohibited from 
going out at twilight with his needle or the scribe 
with his pen, lest the holy day come upon him un- 
awares and he transgress through forgetfulness. 
To guard against the sin of baking upon the Sab- 
bath, putting bread in the oven or cakes upon the 
coals after twilight, was expressly forbidden. 
Neither was it allowable to cleanse clothing from 
vermin or read by lamp-light upon the evening 
of the Sabbath, as in either case one might be 
tempted to put oil in the lamp, which would be 
kindling a fire, or to move it in order to see 
better, which would be bearing a burden. Be- 
sides, an insect might be found and killed, an act 



184. DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

expressly forbidden, the killing of a flea being 
fraught with as' deadly sin as the slaying of a 
camel. 

Women were warned against wearing any new 
or novel ornament which., on their way to and 
from the synagogue, they might be tempted to 
take off and show to their companions for should 
it be carried in the hand, they would have com- 
mited the sin of bearing a burden. Neither was 
it advisable for a woman to look in her mirror 
upon the holy day, lest she discover a white hair 
and pull it out which would be a grievous sin; and 
wearing wooden shoes studded with nails or only 
one shoe was prohibited as involving labor. Any 
conscientious Jew might use a wooden leg or 
crutches or wear wadding in his ear upon the 
Sabbath, but false teeth or a gold plug in the 
tooth were forbidden luxuries, as either might 
fall out and the wearer would then be tempted to 
lift and carry them. Only that food which had 
been prepared on a week day especially for the 
Sabbath might be touched or tasted upon the holy 
day. If a hen laid an egg upon the Sabbath, it 
was forbidden food, for it could not have been 
prepared upon a week day with intention, as* it 
was not then laid and did not exist. 

In case of fire, warfare, or illness, certain con- 
cessions were made. The scriptures and the cases 
in which they were enclosed might be borne from 



ABSURDITIES OF LEGALISM 185 

the scene of a conflagration upon the Sabbath. 
If a fire broke out Friday evening, enough food 
might be saved for three meals; if on the morning 
of the Sabbath, enough for two; if on Saturday 
afternoon, enough for one only. The precedent 
established by Mattathias Maccabeus when with 
his followers, he fought for his life upon the holy 
day, was followed by his descendants; and the 
Jews might legally defend themselves when 
attacked, but were not allowed to take the initia- 
tive in warfare. As the New Testament indi- 
cates, the laws in regard to healing upon the 
Sabbath were very stringent; only when life was 
endangered was the use of remedies to relieve 
suffering permissible. A physician was not 
allowed to set a broken or dislocated bone, but 
if anyone, Jew or Gentile, should be buried 
beneath a falling wall or building, the law per- 
mitted his friends to ascertain whether he were 
alive or dead; if alive, he might be rescued; but 
if he were dead, his body must be left untouched 
until the following day. 

To guard against any possible desecration of 
the day, the many special laws were supplemented 
by the general regulations that no one could climb 
a tree, ride, swim, clap his hands, strike his sides, 
or dance without profaning the Sabbath rest. 

Even more burdensome and more effective than 
the laws of the Sabbath as a barrier between Jew 



186 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

and Gentile were the laws of cleanness and un- 
cleanness which must be observed every day in the 
week. The commands of the Torah in regard 
to this' subject, many of which would meet with 
the approval of modern physicians as prevent- 
ing the spread of contagious disease and con- 
tributing to the public health and welfare, were 
distorted into ludicrous caricatures of their orig- 
inal selves by the ceaseless elaborations of the 
scribes, who constantly increased the number of 
ways in which an orthodox Israelite might incur 
defilement. A Jew was obliged to observe rites 
of purification after coming in contact with a 
Gentile, his house, or any object capable of con- 
tracting uncleanness which he had touched. 
Kitchen utensils bought of a Gentile must be 
plunged into boiling water or purged by fire be- 
fore they were used ; it was not allowable to eat 
at the table of a Gentile, and the milk, oil, and 
bread of the heathen were prohibited foods. 
The laws of defilement governing dishes and 
utensils were especially diffuse and occupied 
thirty chapters of the Mishna. It was there 
decreed that the empty space in hollow earthen 
dishes might contract and cause uncleanness, but 
that the outside was incapable of contracting or 
imparting contamination. Unclean dishes could 
be cleansed only by breaking, and if after 
breaking, there remained a piece which would 



ABSURDITIES OF LEGALISM 187 

hold oil enough to anoint the great toe, this 
fragment was still unclean. According to 'the 
Mishna, defilement was caught and imprisoned 
in hollow spaces, but slipped from flat surfaces 
and left them harmless. A flat plate without a 
rim, an open coal shovel or perforated roaster 
were clean under all circumstances, but the con- 
tagious germ of defilement clung to a plate with 
a rim, a covered coal shovel or an ink-stand with 
divisions. 

Water used for purposes of purification was 
of six grades ranging from the stagnant water 
of a ditch or pond to the water of an active 
spring. Here again the scribes found ample 
material for elaboration and explanation and 
many and diverse were the opinions as to the 
proportions in which the different grades of 
water might be mixed and whether it might be 
mingled with snow, hail, hoar-frost, or ice, for 
a purifying immersion. 

The rule that the hands must be washed before 
eating, for the neglect of which Christ was 
severely censured, was supplemented by another 
considered even more important, that of washing 
the hands after eating; and finally the most 
rigorous washed between courses. The large 
jars used for ablutions must be carefully guarded 
from the introduction of any discoloring or de- 
filing substance and must not be used for any 



188 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

other purpose. If ordinary food was to be 
eaten, an uplifting or affusion of the hands only 
was necessary, but an immersion must take place 
when the first fruits formed a part of the meal. 
For an affusion, enough water to fill one and 
one-half egg shells must be poured upon the up- 
lifted hands in such a way that it would run 
down from the fingers to the wrists. If the 
water did not reach the wrists, the hands were not 
clean. Hence Mark vii, 3, must mean the Fhar- 
sees do not eat except when they have first 
washed their hands to the wrists. 

Under the pressure of all these harassing and 
burdensome rules, Jewish religion rapidly lost 
its freshness and vitality; but even more devi- 
talizing were the laws in regard to prayer, that 
most vital center of religious growth, for the 
form, time, and manner of Israelitish devotion 
w r ere all restricted with a minuteness of detail 
which tended to degrade the natural cry of the 
soul to God into a meaningless matter of dull 
routine. The "vain repetitions" of the prescribed 
forms which were in themselves beautiful and 
inspiring, must be uttered only at the hours in- 
dicated by the Rabbis. A conscientious Jew 
might repeat his evening Shema only between 
the time when the priests returned to eat the 
heave offering and the end of the first night 
watch, although the hour was extended by a few 



ABSURDITIES OF LEGALISM 189 

authorities until midnight or even until break of 
dawn. The time for repeating the- morning 
Shema extended from early twilight when blue 
could first be distinguished from white until the 
sun appeared or according to one eminent au- 
thority, until nine o'clock in the morning, the 
hour when the children of princes were accus- 
tomed to arise. If however, during the stated 
hours, one should read among other passages of 
Scripture that containing the Shema, he might 
be excused from the customary repetitions if he 
had remembered his devotions and had con- 
sciously performed them in this way. 

As the Pharisees only too often so arranged 
their daily tasks that the hour of prayer over- 
took them upon the street corners or in the mar- 
ket place where they could make a public display 
of their devout zeal, the question of making and 
receiving salutations during prayer arose, and 
the decision of the Mishna that prayer must not 
be interrupted even to salute a king or unwind a 
serpent from one's foot was modified by the 
scribes. Salutations were divided by them into 
three classes, salutations of reverence, salutations 
of fear, and salutations to anyone. In the opin- 
ion of certain revered Rabbis, the salutation of 
fear might be given only in the middle of the 
Shema, but the salutation of reverence at the end 
of any one of the paragraphs into which it was 



190 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

divided. Rabbi Jeh-udah, however, he by whom 
the Mishna had been committed to writing, per- 
mitted the salutation of fear to be given in the 
middle of the prayer while the salutation to any- 
one was allowable between paragraphs. 

More general rules commanded that prayer 
be said audibly and in the right order. The de- 
votee who made a mistake must begin again at 
the place where the mistake was made and re- 
peat all perfectly to the end. Workmen might 
pray in a tree or upon a wall. 

Thanking God for food before and after 
eating was also chilled into a formalism, which 
too often touched neither heart nor spirit. Dif- 
ferent forms of grace were prescribed for 
different kinds of food. Wine, fruits of the 
ground, bread, vegetables, vinegar, unripe fallen 
fruits, locusts, milk, cheese and eggs were each 
and all provided with a specified blessing. It 
was decreed by Rabbi Jehudah that food the size 
of an egg demanded the expression of gratitude 
to God; but that no duty might be left unper- 
formed, devout Jews said grace over food the 
size of an olive. According to the school of 
Shammai, anyone who forgot to say grace, must 
return to the place where he had eaten and rec- 
tify his delinquency, but the school of Hillel, less 
stringent, permitted him to say it until the food 



ABSURDITIES OF LEGALISM 191 

was digested whenever and wherever it came to 
mind. 

In addition to all prescribed rules for behavior, 
three outward symbols attached to the person 
of Jewish adults or the doorpost of Jewish 
dwellings constantly reminded devout Israelites 
of their duty to God. These were the Zizith, 
the phylacteries or Tephillin, and the Mezuzah. 
The Zizith were the fringes or tassels of hyacin- 
thine blue which the Pentateuch commanded all 
Jewish men to wear at the corners of their 
outer garments (Num. xv, 37. Deut. xxii, 12) 
"that they might look upon them and remember 
the commandments of the Lord their God." 
The Mezuzah was a small oblong box fastened to 
the right hand doorpost of rooms in Jewish 
houses. The passages Deut. vi, 4-9 and xi, 
13-21 were written upon it in two paragraphs, 
and Jewish children early became accustomed to 
seeing the name of the Most High touched with 
reverence by all who came and went and the 
fingers kissed which had come in contact with 
the holy words. The Tephillin or phylacteries 
were the prayer-straps which must be worn by 
every adult male at morning devotions. They 
consisted of small cases containing tiny rolls of 
parchment on which was written Ex. xiii, 1-10, 
xiii, 11-16 and Deut. vi, 4-9, xi, 13-21, and 



192 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

might be carried in the hand or fastened to the 
arm by a leather strap. Slightly larger cases 
divided into four compartments, one for each 
paragraph of scripture, were sometimes worn 
upon the forehead just below the hair. 

Under the cultivation of the scribes, the 
"hedge of the law," had become a thicket which 
threatened to choke out the garden of true re- 
ligion it had been originated to protect. Al- 
though there were still many sincere Israelites 
who endeavored to make legalism the vehicle of 
true religion rather than its substitute, far too 
often its devotees believed that in discharging 
its numerous and artificial obligations they had 
fulfilled their whole duty toward God and man, 
and were puffed up with self-satisfied pride be- 
cause they had conscientiously performed the 
arduous undertaking. Moreover, legalism had 
become a burden so heavy that its disciples 
longed to be free from its oppressive weight; and 
the moral nature of the Rabbis had been so 
stultified by their absorption in trifling formal- 
ities that the license with which they had twisted 
and exaggerated the words of the sacred books 
was now applied to the evasion of the self-im- 
posed precepts of the oral tradition, every word 
of which they professed to believe infinitely 
sacred. 

The law which forbade carrying from one 



ABSURDITIES OF LEGALISM 193 

tenement to another was exceptionally trying 
because it restricted all freedom of movement 
upon the Sabbath, but if the size of a tenement 
could be enlarged, the troublesome law might be 
rendered less vexatious. It was therefore de- 
creed by the Rabbis that the possession of a com- 
mon entrance or a common store of food made 
several tenements one; and before the beginning 
of the Sabbath, food collected from all the dwel- 
lers in a common court was deposited in one 
place to signify that the contributors occupied a 
single tenement. 

Or a narrow space enclosed on three sides by 
a beam, rope, or string served as a common en- 
trance and made a number of dwellings one. It 
was quite in keeping with the spirit of legalism 
that the quantity and kind of food used for the 
common store be decided upon with conscientious 
care and the length and breadth of the common 
entrance and the size of the beams, ropes, and 
strings with which it was enclosed be made the 
subject of careful consideration. 

Walking a distance of more than two thous- 
and cubits upon the Sabbath was also a forbidden 
privilege and since the restriction interfered with 
certain social pleasures, it was evaded with the 
same childish, but deceitful ingenuity. A Phari- 
see who wished to dine with a friend living more 
than two thousand cubits from his own abode, 



194 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

deposited food enough for two meals at a dis- 
tance of two thousand cubits from his dwelling, 
and from the fictitious home so created, he might 
walk two thousand cubits, thus doubling the al- 
loted distance and reaching the home of his 
friend. Further quibbling rendered the law still 
more elastic, and if any Jew who walked or rode 
upon the Sabbath saw a tree or wall two thousand 
cubits distant, he might declare it his Sabbath 
abode; but the prevarication must be conscienti- 
ously performed and he must say, "My Sabbath 
place shall be at its trunk." For if he said only, 
"My ;Sabbath place shall be under it," this did 
not hold good, because it was too general and in- 
definite. 

The meddling extended to points far more 
deep-seated and vital than those just mentioned 
and obligations to parents, the sanctity of mar- 
riage, and fidelity to the solemnly administered 
oath were all profaned by the touch of the 
same light hands. Deuteronomy xxiv, i, was mis- 
interpreted to mean that a man might put away 
his wife if she should spoil his food or if he found 
another fairer than she. Instead of contributing 
to the support of his aged parents, a son might 
say of the money which should have been used for 
this purpose, "It is Corban," that is, given to 
God, and thus elude the commandment, "Honor 
thy father and thy mother." 



ABSURDITIES OF LEGALISM 195 

It was indeed true of the spiritual leaders of 
the people that they paid "tithes of anise and 
mint and cummin and omitted the weighter mat- 
ters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith; de- 
voured widow's houses and for a pretence made 
long prayers in the market place, made clean 
the outside of the cup and the platter but within 
they were full of extortion and excess." 



CHAPTER XII 

THE SCRIBES; THE PHARISEES, THE SADDUCEES 
AND THE ESSENES 

When the voice of prophecy had been silenced 
by the voice of the law, the authority of priest 
and prophet was supplanted by that of the law- 
yer or scribe, and the reverence rendered the oral 
tradition was extended to its custodian and inven- 
tor. In Galilee, Babylon, Judea and the cities 
of the dispersion, wherever the message of the 
sacred scrolls had been borne, the scribe per- 
formed his conspicuous and manifold duties. He 
made plain intricate and obscure passages of 
scripture; he elaborated ancient laws and created 
new ones till every possible emergency was pro- 
vided for; he preached in the synagogue and took 
his place beside elders and high priests in courts 
of justice. "No one could be born, circumcised, 
brought up, educated, betrothed, married or bur- 
ied — no one could celebrate the Sabbath or other 
feasts or begin a business, or make a contract, 
or kill a beast for food, or even bake bread, with- 
out the advice or presence of a Rabbi." In his 

196 



JEWISH SECTS 197 

own estimation and that of his followers, he was 
"the well plastered pit filled with the water of 
knowledge out of which not one drop can escape" 
and the "divine aristocrat among the vulgar herd 
of rude and profane country people who know not 
the law and are accursed." He exacted from 
his pupils in extreme measure the reverence in 
which the American .boys and girls of the present 
generation are sadly deficient. As the spirit- 
ual sponsor of his people, he believed he had per- 
formed for them a greater service than their 
earthly parents; consequently, if a father and 
a teacher bore burdens and both needed assist- 
ance, the son and pupil must first aid his teacher; 
or if a man's teacher and his father had both been 
sold into captivity, the teacher must first be ran- 
somed and then the father. Pupils must assent 
to any statement that their master made, no 
matter how startling or incredible it might 
be. The vanity and self-esteem fostered 
by this unreasoning homage sometimes resulted 
in claims that were both blasphemous and de- 
grading; and a story of a certain learned Rabbi 
who was said to have been called by God to 
heaven to confirm His opinion in a dispute which 
had taken place between Himself and the angels, 
is actually recorded in the Talmud. No wonder 
that in three of the gospels, the scribes are con- 
demned by Christ for loving the uppermost 



198 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

rooms at feasts and the chief seats in the syna- 
gogue and to be called of men "Rabbi! Rabbi !" 

The fact that scribes were prohibited from re- 
ceiving money for teaching, preaching or pro- 
nouncing judgment and must often live lives of 
poverty and self-sacrifice doubtless won the con- 
fidence and respect of their followers. "Make 
the law neither a crown wherewith to make a 
show nor a spade wherewith to dig" and "He 
who uses the crown (of the law) for external 
aims fades away" were sayings which contributed 
to the effectiveness of their authority, and it is 
still a Jewish proverb that a fat Rabbi is little 
worth. 

The rule in regard to receiving recompense for 
official services, although sometimes modified in 
the case of teachers, was generally observed; and 
unless a Rabbi was financially independent, he 
must learn a trade by means of which he might 
earn a livelihood for himself and his family. 
Hillel, the most famous of all the scribes, sup- 
ported himself by the work of his hands and other 
Rabbis of repute earned their living by 
needle-making, shoe-making, and fashioning 
articles from metal, St. Paul, who was also a 
Rabbi, weaving covers for tents to earn his 
daily bread. As the greater proportion of 
a Rabbi's time must be spent in attending 
to professional duties, he could gain only scanty 



JEWISH SECTS 199 

subsistence from trade; but, in spite of his pov- 
erty, he was cordially received into wealthy Jew- 
ish families and often found an escape from hard- 
ship in marriage, for the honor of becoming 
either the father-in-law o.r son-in-law of a Rabbi 
more than compensated for the expense incurred 
in his support. 

It was a scribe's first duty to make himself 
thoroughly conversant with both the oral and 
written law, a task at least partially accomplished 
in youth by attending one of those houses of in- 
struction where young men eager for a knowl- 
edge of the law gathered about famous Rabbis. 
The mastery of the oral tradition was made es- 
pecially difficult by the fact that it was not com- 
mitted to writing, and the thousands of minutiae 
of which it consisted must be laboriously memo- 
rized by numerous repetitions on the part of both 
teacher and pupil. The monotony of this weari- 
some method was sometimes broken by a series 
of questions in the discussion of which the pupils 
were allowed to join, or by Haggadic legends of a 
lively character with which the Rabbis enter- 
tained their pupils. Students were especially 
warned against any slip of memory or repeating 
a precept in other than the exact words in which 
it was imparted to them, the great Hillel himself 
purposely mispronouncing a word because his 
teacher had committed the same error. 



200 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

But the mastery of the law as it stood was only 
the beginning of a scribe's study, for new 
laws to meet real or possible contigencies must be 
constantly created, and Rabbinical schools of 
highest rank were those in which noted Rabbis 
met to prolong and separate into more and more 
infinitesmal strands the never-ending thread of 
the oral tradition. The results of the scribes' 
discussions at first had no bearing upon actual 
life, but as their opinions gained in repute, theory 
became established law and a decision upon 
which a majority of the learned had agreed must 
be recognized and obeyed. These schools cen- 
tered about Jerusalem, the discussions sometimes 
taking pla*ce in the outer courts of the temple or 
beneath the colonnades of its porches. 

Since a scribe's actual knowledge of the law 
made him a desirable judge, he was frequently 
appointed to sentence offenders in minor courts 
of justice and was among the prominent members 
of the great Sanhedrin. After the fall of Jeru- 
salem in A. D. 70 when the Sanhedrin was dis- 
solved and the temple worship necessarily aban- 
doned, the Rabbis as the only leaders of the 
people, gained such absolute authority both as 
legislators and judges that the decree or sentence 
of one scribe of distinction was voluntarily 
obeyed. (It is related that Rabbi Akiha once con- 
demned a man to pay a fine of 400 denarii for un- 



JEWISH SECTS 201 

covering his head to a woman in the street). In' 
addition to his other duties, the Rabbi was more 
frequently called to preach in the synagogue than 
any other member of the congregation, and the 
preservation of the ancient text of Scripture 
from interpolations also fell to his lot. 

The most famous of all the scribes were Hillel 
and Shammai, the leaders of two rival schools 
existing at Jerusalem in the' reign of Herod the 
Great. The accounts of their lives which have 
been handed down to us are many of them leg- 
endary. It is said that Hillel came from his 
birthplace Babylon to Jerusalem that he might 
attend the school of Shemeaiah and Abtalion. 
As he was a day laborer with a family dependent 
on him for -support, he was one Friday night 
unable to pay the small entrance fee which the 
school demanded and in spite of the bitter cold 
and falling snow, climbed up to the window of 
the house of instruction to overhear the words 
of his famous masters. The discussion continued 
all night and when at the approach of daylight, a 
darkened window attracted the attention of 
Shemeaiah, the numb and half frozen form of 
Hillel was discovered. The ambitious pupil was 
brought into the warm school-room and 
restored to consciousness by the ministrations 
of his teachers who declared that such 
zeal as his justified a transgression of the 



202 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

Sabbath .law. In his thirst for learning, 
Hillel is said to have acquired knowledge of 
a novel sort, becoming conversant with the lan- 
guage of mountains, valleys, plants, trees, wild 
beasts and demons, as well as the tongues of all 
races and nations of men. His gentleness and 
love of peace as well as his learning was pro- 
verbial. The most famous of the many wise say- 
ings attributed to him is that in which he summa- 
rized the law for the benefit of a heathen. "What 
you would yourself dislike never do to your neigh- 
bor; that is the whole law, all else is only its 
application." 

Whether Shammai was one and the same as 
that Sameas or Shammai who alone of all the 
Sanhedrin dared to condemn the youthful Herod 
when he was brought before the great assembly 
for trial, it is impossible to say. Tradition tells 
us that he was noted for his severity, insisting 
that his infant grandson should observe the Feast 
of Tabernacles when only a day old; and his rigid 
maintenance of all the details of the oral tra- 
dition is said to have made his followers more 
numerous than those of the gentle Hillel. 

A scribe might be either a Pharisee or a Sad- 
ducee but from his nature which was in many re- 
spects identical with that of the Pharisees, he 
more often belonged to the latter party. The 
Pharisees and the Sadducees sprang from two 



JEWISH SECTS 203 

divergent and often conflicting tendencies of long 
standing. The Pharisees were the strictly legal 
party, the concentrated essence of that phase of 
Judaism which had originated with Ezra and 
Nehemiah. As the Chasidim or "pious," they 
had suffered martyrdom under Antiochus Epi- 
phanes and had sacrificed life and property in the 
desperate conflict for religious freedom under 
Judas Maccabeus. At first the friends and loyal 
supporters of the Asmonean monarchs, they be- 
came the bitter opponents of John Hyrcanus when 
he had made law and religion secondary to politi- 
cal advancement, and it was during his reign that 
they first received the name of Pharisees and Sep- 
aratists. They were completely dominated by 
one idea, that of the law, and looked out upon 
life from its contracted viewpoint, vigorously op- 
posing as evil all that conflicted with its letter. 
Political independence and material prosperity 
which would involve contact with profane and 
unclean nations, were resigned in the hope that 
they might be amply restored at the coming of 
the promised Messiah; and the burdensome law 
was kept by faithful Pharisees with scrupulous ex- 
actness because of the reward which awaited its 
disciple in heaven. The consistency with which 
they maintained the supremacy of their ideal gave 
them a lasting vitality and such a tremendous in- 
fluence over the people that the Sadducees were 



204 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

often forced to submit to their demands to retain 
a place in the Sanhedrin. The two conflicting be- 
liefs that God directs the most ordinary events 
of every day life — even if a man should cut his 
finger it was the belief of the Pharisees that the 
accident had been preordained by God — and that 
human beings are themselves responsible for 
what they do and say sometimes led the Phar- 
isees to odd inconsistencies in conduct. When, 
for instance, Herod the Great with the Romans 
besieged Jerusalem, the Pharisees commanded 
the people to open the gates of the city to the be- 
sieging army as it was the will of God that they 
should submit to the rule of the heathen; but 
when a few days later, they were ordered to take 
the oath of allegiance to Rome, they refused to 
do so because God was their king and it was their 
duty to obey Him alone. 

The order or fraternity in which Pharisaism 
reached its climax was comparatively limited in 
number, consisting according to Josephus, of six 
thousand members. To join this exclusive league, 
the applicant must take a vow in the presence of 
three Rabbis to abstain from everything which 
had not been tithed and to observe the numerous 
laws of cleanness and uncleanness. One might if 
he chose, become a Neeman or accredited one 
with whom it was safe to engage in commerce by 
taking only the first of these vows; but he could 



JEWISH SECTS 205 

become a Chaber or Pharisee of highest rank 
only when he had pledged himself to observe both 
classes of restrictions. The vow in regard to 
tithing led to all sorts of complications as it pro- 
hibited one who had taken it from buying of a 
Gentile or receiving hospitality from any but his 
own nation, and made it imperative that every 
fruit merchant and grocer should join the fra- 
ternity. A Chaber would no more associate 
with an Amhaarez or countryman who knew not 
the law and was accursed than a Jew of ordinary 
rank would associate with a Gentile*. According 
to the Mishna "He who takes upon himself to be 
a Chaber sells neither fresh nor dry fruit to the 
Amhaarez, buys from them no fresh fruit, does 
not enter their houses as a guest, nor receive them 
as guests within their walls." 

The isolated pedestal upon which a Pharisee 
was placed by his vows gave him a sense of self- 
satisfied sanctity and superiority, although his 
obligations became finally so numerous and bur- 
densome that he not infrequently evaded them. 
In the time of Christ, the lofty ideal of the 
Maccabean martyrs had been supplanted by 
vanity and insincerity, and even in the Talmud, 
the "plague of Pharisaism" is slightingly spoken 
of. A silly pietist, a clever sinner, and a female 
Pharisee are ranked among the troubles of life; 
and in both the Talmuds, seven kinds of Phar- 



206 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

isees are enumerated, only one of which is said to 
be the true Pharisee or Pharisee from love. 

Opposed to the extremes of the Pharisees 
were the Sadducees, the nobles and aristocrats of 
[fudea, from whose ranks the high priest was 
chosen. Throughout the long years of Persian 
and Greek dominance, the high priest had been 
the political as well as the religious head of the 
nation, and had been entrusted with whatever 
power the Gentile masters of Israel had seen fit 
to confer upon the nation. The family of the 
presiding prince and high priest, and the families 
from which former high priests had been chosen 
held the highest social positions in Judea. The 
wealth obtained from their various emoluments, 
the tithes and first fruits which the law compelled 
the people to pay for their support, afforded them 
superior advantages for education and enlight- 
enment. Their horizon had moreover been 
broadened by friendly relations with heathen kings 
and contact with the Greek culture which many of 
them had adopted. Among them were the Hel- 
lenists who had shirked their part in the Macca- 
bean uprising — a delinquency for which the Chas- 
idim had never forgiven them — and the broader 
minded followers of Judas Maccabeus who had 
favored his alliance with Rome. When Judas 
Hyrcanus' policy of political advancement had 
made a break with the Pharisees necessary, his 



JEWISH SECTS 207 

priestly supporters first received the name Sad- 
ducee, a word derived from Zadok, the name of 
the high priest who officiated in the reign of 
Solomon and whose family was still prominent 
in Jerusalem. 

The most pronounced distinction between the 
Pharisees and Sadducees lay in their attitude to- 
ward the oral tradition which the Sadducees did 
not consider binding and kept or broke at will. 
With their superior enlightenment, they could not 
fail to see the absurdity an 4 d pettiness of the ex- 
tremes of Pharisaism. It was moreover im- 
possible for them to maintain its exclusive laws of 
cleanness and uncleanness, and at the same time 
make the alliances with heathen nations which 
their policy of political advancement demanded. 
As the New Testament indicates, they did not be- 
lieve- in the resurrection of the body; and their 
idea of the hereafter of the soul was an existence 
in Sheol so vague and distorted that they pre- 
ferred to labor for the things which could be seen 
and handled, rather than risk all for the shadowy 
and uncertain blessings of a world to come. Grad- 
ually their materialism and indifference to Phar- 
isaic ideals had created a schism between them- 
selves and the people until in the time of Christ, 
oddly enough, the scribes and lawyers had be- 
come the clergy of the nation and the priests its 
nobles and politicians. "Improbable as it may 



208 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

seem they were the real patriots with the motto 
Israel above all ! Israel's honor, Israel's dignity 
and Israel's freedom were their guiding stars." 

Until the fall of Jerusalem, the Sadducees 
controlled the political affairs of the nation, but 
when the Jews no longer existed politically, the 
Sadducees also ceased to exist and even their own 
people did not know what the principles of the 
party had been. 

Apart from the soil and grime of Jewish 
public life, which neither the Pharisees nor the 
Sadducees had altogether escaped, there lived in 
the second century before Christ yet another sect, 
the Essenes, who, like mystics and ascetics of all 
generations, the monks of mediaeval ages and 
our own respected Shakers, strove to reach ideal 
peace and purity by withdrawing from the world 
and living in seclusion a life of simplicity and 
righteousness. Their largest settlement was on 
the oasis of Engedi by the Dead Sea; but isolated 
houses of the order might be found in every 
large town of Palestine. The society consisted 
of about four thousand men and women, and 
could be entered only after three years' probation. 
Each community was presided over by a presi- 
dent to whom its members must render implicit 
obedience and to whom candidates might apply 
for admission. After one year of probation, the 
novice was allowed to share the purifying lus- 



JEWISH SECTS 209 

trations of the order and when two more years 
of faithful service had passed, a fearful oath to 
conceal nothing from his brethren and to pre- 
serve the secrets pf the order from outsiders 
made him a member in good standing, and he 
was admitted to the common meals. 

The Essene was relieved from the burdens of 
poverty and temptations of wealth by the law 
which allowed him to accumulate no property, but 
required him rather to depend for the necessities 
of daily life upon the common purse, the contents 
of which were shared by all the brethren. Who- 
ever entered the order delivered over houses, 
slaves, flocks or any other property he possessed 
to a common manager, and the daily wages of 
each member also replenished the common purse 
which provided for the needs of all. Common 
food and common clothing, overalls for winter 
and white linen robes for the sacrificial feasts, 
were purchased by chosen managers; and any 
member who wished to aid the poor might 
borrow from the common store, the extent of his 
charity being restricted only in the case of rela- 
tives. Sick or aged Essenes need feel no anxiety 
about their support, as they were tenderly cared 
for by young and healthy members of the order 
and their every want supplied from the common 
purse. 

Each day the Essene followed the same routine. 



210 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

rising early in the morning and praying with his 
face turned toward the rising -sun before he 
uttered a 'profane' or secular word. He then 
went to his labor which was most frequently agri- 
culture. Trade was forbidden because it might 
lead to covetousness, but any sort of handicraft 
except the manufacture of weapons was permis- 
sible. He returned from work in time to don his 
white linen robe before going to the common 
dining hall where a priest who was also the baker, 
served all with bread and vegetables. No one 
was permitted to taste the food until prayer had 
been offered by the priest who also prayed at the 
end of the meal. After all had honored God as 
the giver of food, they changed their robes and 
returned to their work until time for the evening 
meal, which was conducted in ex'actly the same 
way. 

The integrity of the Essenes was such that they 
were more respected by the Greeks and Romans 
than any other class of Jews. They were excessively 
frugal, honest and modest. Slavery was abol- 
ished in their communities, swearing was for- 
bidden, and every word that was said by them was 
more reliable than the oath of other men. 
Shoes and clothing were not thrown aside until 
they were utterly useless and at their meals, they 
were "contented with the same dish day by day, 
loving sufficiency and rejecting great expense as 



JEWISH SECTS 211 

harmful to both mind and body." Marriage was 
forsworn, but children were adopted by the adult 
members of the order to be trained in the prin- 
ciples of Essenism. 

Their origin, even the derivation of their name, 
is wrapped in mystery and has been the subject of 
much speculation. Many of their beliefs and 
customs indicate that the order was a peculiar 
offshoot from the root of Judaism; others that a 
Hellenistic graft had been joined with the Phari- 
saic stem. Like the Jews, they believed that God 
was the author of an unalterable faith and 
esteemed the law and law-giver above all else, 
punishing with death anyone who blasphemed the 
name of Moses. The Sabbath was even more 
strictly kept by them than by the Pharisees, and 
their laws of separation and purification were 
exaggerated phases of Pharisaic rules. They 
would not move a dish from its place upon the 
Sabbath, and contact with a member of a lower 
order made a purifying lustration necessary. 
Certain other characteristics, their efforts for sim- 
plicity of life, their rejection of trade, their ab- 
stinence and frugality were alien to the ideals of 
Pharisees. Even more completely removed 
from the realm of Pharisaism was their attitude 
toward animal sacrifice which they completely 
repudiated, and in which they refused to partici- 
pate. They chose their own priests from the 



212 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

descendants of the house of Aaron, and expressed 
their respect for Jewish authorities by sending 
gifts of incense to the temple. 

Their reverence for the sun in whose brightness 
they beheld an emblem of the divine radiance was 
also a departure from the traditions of Judaism. 
When they prayed, they did not turn their faces 
toward the Holy of Holies at Jerusalem, but 
rather toward the light of the Sun. They also 
refrained from committing any unclean act in the 
presence of the great luminary lest they offend its 
brightness. These customs point toward mingled 
Hellenistic and Oriental influences but if, as Jose- 
phus would have us believe, the Essenes taught 
the pre-existence of the soul and believed that the 
body was its prison, it must be true that Hellen- 
ism and especially the philosophy of the Greek 
Pythagoras had much to do with the molding of 
this exemplary order, which is called by Ewald 
the conscience of the Jewish nation. 



CHAPTER XIII 

HELLENISM AND JUDAISM 

The Hellenism brought to the East by Alexan- 
der the Great was, as we have seen, gently and 
gradually drawing the Jews into its magnetic and 
friendly current when they were startled to a con- 
sciousness of their imperiled individuality by the 
barbaric violence of Antiochus Ephiphanes; and 
the influx of Greek culture was abruptly checked 
by the persecution and the subsequent victories 
of the Maccabees. But the triumph was not 
final. Hellenism was too intangible and subtle 
a force to be destroyed by the sword and, like a 
contagious disease, was checked in one place only 
to break out in another. It had become a part 
of the Eastern atmosphere and its influence upon 
every phase of Oriental life was as inescapable 
and irresistible as that of the sun or rain upon 
vegetation. "It was to become the culture of the 
world and its tide could not be turned. Like 
other nations, the Jews must submit to the time 
spirit, that tyrranos who rules all in their think- 
ing, speaking, and doing whether they list or not." 

213 



214 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

The Asmonean monarchs, whose ancestors the 
Maccabees, had so violently opposed Hellenism 
gave their children Greek names, employed for- 
eign mercenaries, issued foreign coins; and one 
of their number was the openly avowed Triend 
and disciple of the Greeks. The Roman con- 
querors of Greece had also succumbed to the se- 
duction of Greek culture, and at the coming of 
the Romans and the Herodians, a new wave of 
mingled Latin and Greek culture swept over 
Palestine. 

A survey of Palestine i.n the reign of Herod the 
Great shows how deeply dyed in Hellenism was 
nearly every phase of Oriental life. In the chain 
of Gentile cities which encircled the central Jewish 
provinces, Judea, Perea, and Galilee, Hellenism 
had met with no opposition and an amalgamation 
of Greek and Oriental culture in which Hellenism 
was the dominant element, prevailed. The 
Philistines and Phoenicians worshipped the gods 
of the Greeks, and their coins bore the images of 
Zeus, Athene, Pan and other Greek divinities. 
In Caesarea and many of the coast towns, temples 
to the Caesars had been erected by Herod the 
Great, and the games so closely linked with the 
religious rites of the Romans had also been estab- 
lished by him-. Even better proofs of their 
deeply Hellenistic spirit were the men prominent 
in Greek letters who were produced by them, 



HELLENISM AND JUDAISM 215 

Antiochus, a teacher of Cicero, the grammarian 
Ptolemais, and Theodorus, the tutor of the Em- 
peror Tiberius, all emanating from these outer 
cities of Palestine. 

An abundance of Greek and Latin words found 
in the Mishna indicate that, in the central prov- 
inces, the scribes' hatred of Hellenism had not 
affected other departments of life than religion; 
for the government, military service, trade and 
industry, art, social life, fashions and ornaments 
of these provinces all bowed before the superiority 
of Greek intelligence and bore the impress of the 
Greek mind. The Greek names by which the 
governor, the soldiers, and the weapons of Pales- 
tine were designated bore witness to their Hellen- 
istic origin, and public baths and inns also bore 
Greek names. Public games like those swept 
away by the persecution had been again introduced 
by Herod and although the Pharisees disapproved 
of them, we have no reason to suppose that they 
were not well attended. The many buildings 
erected by Herod the Great were of the Grseco- 
Roman style of architecture, the penetrating 
Hellenistic culture intruding even upon the fore- 
courts of the Jewish temple itself with its Corin- 
thian pillars and fluted colonnades. In commerce 
also, the Jews of Palestine imitated the customs 
of their heathen neighbors, buying and selling for 
Roman coin with Greek inscriptions, the luxuries 



216 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

and necessities used by the great Gentile world 
with which they were surrounded. Trading with 
heathen neighbors had made a slight knowledge 
of the Greek language general, and it is prob- 
able that it was well-known among the educated 
classes. 

In one instance only had the progress of Hellen- 
ism been successfully arrested. Every approach 
to Judaism had been doubly locked and barred 
against Greek idolatry by the ceaseless activity of 
the scribes. The Mosaic commandment "Thou 
shalt not make unto thyself any graven image, 
or any likeness of anything" was so literally inter- 
preted that statues of men, birds, or beasts used 
for ornamental purposes only, must be rigorously 
banished. The images with which Herod had 
adorned his palace at Jerusalem were regarded 
with abhorrence, and when Pilate entered Judea 
with the Roman :eagles at the head of his legions, 
there was a tumultuous uprising. The Jews were 
forbidden to transact business of any sort with 
Gentiles three days before and three days after 
a heathen festival; and a ban was placed upon 
articles connected in any way with heathen 
worship. 

One Hellenistic wedge alone pierced the bar- 
riers of Pharisaism. The great labor and pains 
expended upon compiling the Hebrew edition of 
the sacred books had made them very expensive 



HELLENISM AND JUDAISM 217 

and their price had placed them quite beyond the 
reach of the common people. In Rome, on the 
contrary, hundreds of slaves were employed in 
copying what one dictated, and their gratuitous 
labor had reduced the price of Greek and Roman 
manuscripts until the cost of the Septuagint or 
Greek version of the Hebrew Bible was only 
about twice that of our present people's edition. 
The comparatively low cost of the Septuagint had 
made it the Bible commonly used in Galilee and 
even in Judea, and the Apocryphal books which 
it included afforded its readers a glimpse into the 
fascinating, but forbidden regions of Greek phil- 
osophy. Although these books were placed by 
Jewish scholars many degrees below the level of 
the canonical books of the Bible, the glorification 
of Jews and Judaism in which their authors in- 
dulged won the favor of the Rabbis; but how 
sternly any inclination to stray farther along the 
paths of Hellenistic thought was repressed is in- 
dicated by the story of a young Rabbi who after 
mastering every phase of the Jewish law, begged 
to be allowed to study Greek philosophy. A 
venerable uncle checked his profane longing by 
quoting Joshua i, 8 and saying "Go and search 
what is that hour which is neither of the day nor 
night and in it thou mayest study Greek philoso- 
phy." These Jewish Rabbis had yet to learn that 
true piety reaches out beyond itself and that the 



218 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

deepest and most sincere religious belief goes 
hand in hand with inquiry. Under the sway of 
the scribes, the atmosphere of Judea had become 
too stifling for the development of that precious 
germ of revelation which the Jews had borne 
down through the ages; for the wondrous reve- 
lation their authorities were soon to reject. 

But while ancient Judaism, behind the con- 
tracted barriers she had erected, held fast to the 
shell of the oral tradition, looking with pride upon 
its curious convolutions, listening ever and anon to 
its hollow murmur, the Jews of the dispersion in 
Alexandria were forging the first links in the 
chain which was to bind Hellenism to Judaism 
and through it, to Christianity. Transplanted 
from insulated Judea to the city which bore the 
name of its great founder and over which his 
tutor Aristotle held sway, they breathed a freer 
air, led a more untrammeled life. Under the 
friendly rule of the Ptolemies, the Jews were the 
only colonists in Alexandria to receive political 
privileges equal to those of the Greeks, and 
although they lived in a community by themselves 
and were governed by their own alabarch, the 
exigencies of trade and of the other occupations 
by which they earned a livelihood had made them 
Hellenists, that is, Jews who spoke the language 
and adopted the customs of their Greek neigh- 
bors. The brilliant Greek culture which they met 



HELLENISM AND JUDAISM 219 

daily in the market-place and the forum could not 
fail to appeal to the Jewish mind; but notwith- 
standing its fascination, the Alexandrian immi- 
grants were still loyal Jews, faithfully and proudly 
maintaining the services of the synagogue and 
looking with contempt upon the frivolity of the 
Greeks and their barbaric and meaningless re- 
ligious rites. While other colonists, even those 
who had a faith of their own, joined in worship- 
ping the gods of their home town the Jews stead- 
fastly refused to participate in idolatry of any 
kind or to join in emperor worship when it be- 
came prevalent. The abruptness with which 
Judaism stood out against the background of the 
Graeco-Roman world while all other religions 
blended with it, made it a conspicuous point of 
attack. It incurred the criticism and hostility of 
the Greeks, and accusations of all kinds emanated 
from the heathen Alexandrians. 

The Jews had made no contribution to world 
culture, they declared. Their origin was in- 
ferior, for were not their ancestors leprous 
Egyptians who had migrated to Palestine? 
They were atheists because they refused to wor- 
ship the gods of the Greeks; they were bad citi- 
zens because they would not worship the Roman 
Emperor whose protection they enjoyed. More 
serious, because it was not wholly ungrounded, 
was the complaint of the Greeks that in repudi- 



220 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

ating the Alexandrian belief that all men are 
brethren and equal before God, the Jews had 
branded themselves as inhumane and haters of 
their fellow-men. No dreamy absorption in the 
law, written or oral, was possible in an atmos- 
phere charged with such pointed missiles, and 
the Alexandrian Jews must be constantly on the 
alert to meet and parry the thrusts of the Greeks 
and their philosophy. The questions suggested 
by the subtle and penetrating Greek mind could 
not be answered by puerile sophistries, and the 
Jews who endeavored to respond to them were 
both startled and chagrined to find fresh truth 
and beauty in the philosophy of Pythagoras, 
Socrates, Plato, and the Stoics. The Alexan- 
drian Jew must meet "argument with argument, 
and that not only for those who were without, 
but in order himself to be quite sure of what he 
believed. He must be able to hold the truth not 
only in controversy with others where pride 
might bid him stand fast, but in that much more 
serious contest within, where a man meets the old 
adversary in the secret arena of his own mind and 
has to sustain that terrible hand-to-hand fight 
in which he is uncheered by outward help. But 
why should he shrink from the conflict when he 
was sure that his was the divine truth and that 
therefore victory must be on his side?" To one 
truth at least he felt he might hold fast. Moses 



HELLENISM AND JUDAISM 221 

the lawgiver was the greatest of all men and the 
law given to him by God for his chosen people 
contained the basis of all goodness and truth. 
If the nobler elements of Greek philosophy were 
not apparent on the surface of the Hebrew Bible, 
by penetrating beneath the outer crust, he might 
surely find the hidden gold and in consequence 
a host of literary productions for the purpose 
of upholding Judaism against the attacks of 
the heathen and proving that the Hebrew Bible 
contained all that was best in Greek philos- 
ophy sprang into existence. 

The letter of the fictitious Aristeas, which pro- 
claims the anxiety of Ptolemy Philadelphus to 
procure a translation of the Jewish Scriptures, 
was evidently written to uphold the dignity of 
Judaism in the eyes of the heathen; and the Sep- 
tuagint was the first plank in the bridge which" 
was to cross the chasm between Jews and Gen- 
tiles. Among other productions written with 
the same object in mind were the Fourth book 
of Maccabees, numerous pseudonymic books, and 
the Apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon in which, as 
has already been said, we find a first faint premo- 
nition of the warmth and humanity of the Chris- 
tian faith. 

The first Jewish author, however, who wrote 
with the openly avowed intention of extracting 
from the Jewish Bible all the nobler elements of 



222 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

Greek philosophy was Aristobulus, an Alexan- 
drian Jew, who probably lived in the second 
century before Christ. Primarily the disciple of 
Aristotle, he was also a faithful Jew and boldly 
asserts in his commentary on the Pentateuch, a 
fragment of which only has been preserved to 
us, that Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato derived 
their philosophies from Moses, and that the 
Greek poets Homer and Hesiod also borrowed 
much from him. The method which he used to 
prove the startling conclusions at which he ar- 
rived was that of allegorical interpretation, 
already employed by Plato and the Stoics to find 
a deeper meaning in the writings of Homer. By 
applying it to mythical stories or popular beliefs 
and by tracing the supposed symbolical meaning 
of names, numbers, etc, it became easy to prove 
almost anything, or to extract from philosophical 
truths, ethical principles and even the later results 
of natural science. "Such a process was peculiarly 
pleasing to the imagination and the results alike 
astounding and satisfactory, since as they could 
not be proved, neither could they be disproved. 
The allegorical method was the welcome key 
by which the Hellenists might unlock the hid- 
den treasury of Scripture. " By it Aristobulus 
brought the whole system of Aristotle out of the 
Bible. "When we read that God stood, it meant 
the stable order of the world; that He created 



HELLENISM AND JUDAISM 223 

the world in six days, the orderly succession of 
time; the rest of the Sabbath, the preservation 
of what was created." So determined was 
Aristobulus in his purpose, he was not to be 
thwarted by a dearth of the historical evidence 
which the public demanded. Literary honor in 
the second century before Christ was not what 
it is today, and etiquette lauded the modesty of 
one who attributed his own work to another. If 
therefore proof that Greek poetry and philos- 
ophy had been derived from the teachings of 
Moses did not exist, Aristobulus felt no hesi- 
tation in creating it. Anonymous poems had 
often been attributed to Orpheus, the mythical 
singer of Thrace whose sweet music is said to 
have charmed men and wild beasts. Aristobulus 
therefore audaciously asserted that Orpheus had 
been taught by the Jewish lawgiver whom he had 
met in Egypt; and certain quotations decidedly 
Jewish in character were added to the list of the 
Thracian charmer's supposed writings. Other 
quotations of Jewish origin inserted in Aris- 
tobulus' commentary on the Pentateuch were 
assigned to Homer, Hesiod, and Linus. 

Fired by the example of Aristobulus, other 
Hellenists were not slow to follow in his foot- 
steps. Jewish wisdom emanating from the Si- 
byls who were consulted by Greece and Rome in 
times of public danger and misfortune, would be 



224 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

most convincing to the cultured heathen. This 
opportunity was eagerly embraced and a col- 
lection of Sybylline oracles of Jewish origin was 
the result. Other books written to edify and 
perhaps convert the heathen, as the Psalter of 
Solomon, the book of Enoch, and the book of 
Jubilees, were also ascribed to false authors. 

But the man who completed and systematized 
the work begun by Aristobulus was Philo, a 
Jewish philosopher, born in Alexandria between 
10 and 20 B. c. With the exception of Josephus, 
Philo was the most prominent of all the Hellen- 
ists. His father was one of the wealthiest and 
most influential of Alexandria's merchant princes 
and his brother the alabarch of the Jewish com- 
munity of that city. He was himself, in his old 
age, one of the ambassadors sent to Caligula to 
beg for the removal of the images which had 
caused great disturbance in Judea. Philo had 
acquired a profound knowledge of Greek philos- 
ophy. He was at the same time an enthusiastic 
believer in the faith of his race, and, like Aris- 
tobulus, was determined to find one in the other. 
Pythagoras, Plato, and the Stoics were to him 
great and revered teachers, not pagan Greeks; 
but greater and more revered than any other was 
Moses whose message was divinely inspired, 
whose authority he acknowledged as supreme. 

By interweaving the many and diverse strands 



HELLENISM AND JUDAISM 225 

of Greek philosophy and Jewish religion, Philo 
produced a philosophy whose design was original 
with himself. Of the numerous books written 
by him, the commentary on Genesis is the one 
best calculated to illustrate the principles of his 
theory of life. Certain eternal verities known 
to all men and all ages, were found in both the 
Jewish Scriptures and books of Greek wisdom. 
Encouraged by this resemblance, Philo believed 
that a profound study of the Scriptures would 
prove that Greek philosophers had learned their 
wisdom from Moses, the greatest and wisest o'f 
all men, and like his predecessors, used the 
method of allegorical interpretation to establish 
the supremacy of the Jewish law-giver. He was 
convinced that beneath the outer husk of literal 
and historical truth lay the more valuable kernels, 
truths concerning the supreme problems of 
human existence. In the slaying of the Egyp- 
tian by Moses, he beheld the subjugation of 
passion; in Simeon, the soul aiming for higher 
things. The Palestinian Jews had already used 
this method of interpretation in the Haggadah 
but in Philo's hands the method became much 
more penetrating and far-reaching. He not only 
touched everything, beasts, birds, plants, stones, 
conditions and substances, even sex, with the 
magic wand of his symbolism, but he took un- 
warranted liberties with the text. The spelling 



226 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

of words was altered, and special significance 
was attached to the choice and use of words, the 
position of paragraphs and even the use of an 
unexpected singular or plural. Every adverb, 
participle, and preposition had its special hidden 
meaning. 

The God discovered in the Jewish Bible by him 
was, strangely enough, not the God of Israel's 
priests, but the God of the Greek philosophers. 
Like Plato and his followers, he believed God 
was not only free from human faults, but far 
above human virtues and incomprehensible to 
man's limited apprehensions. It was thus pos- 
sible to say not what He was, but only what He 
was not, a Being whom man could not know, a 
vague and unsatisfactory Something who existed 
neither in time nor space, who was devoid of all 
human qualities. This absence of attributes was 
contradicted by the Stoic and Jewish idea that 
God was indwelling and omnipresent, the light 
and well-spring of the soul. It was believed 
that all perfection was derived from God, but 
only the soul could be directly created by Him, 
for with matter He could have nothing to do. 
Since contact with matter might mar the per- 
fection of God and stain His beauty, the works 
of creation and providence must be accomplished 
through the agency of intermediary beings. 
This idea was not new to either Jews or Greeks, 



HELLENISM AND JUDAISM 227 

for the former were accustomed to think of 
angels, and the latter of daemons as the mes- 
sengers of God. Intangible and impersonal 
forces working in the world had been repre- 
sented by Plato's doctrine of ideas and the Stoic 
doctrine of active causes. All four doctrines 
were combined in Philo's theory of intermediary 
beings with confusing inconsistency. The atmos- 
phere, according to Philo, was filled with souls. 
Those attracted by sensuous delights, rested 
nearest the earth and were caught and impris- 
oned in bodies. Those who dwelt higher in the 
atmosphere were the medium through which God 
revealed himself to men. They issued from 
God as "beams from the light, as the waters from 
the spring, as the breath from a person." They 
were both messenger and message, both personal 
and impersonal. Great among these forces were 
might and goodness, but most universal and su- 
preme of all was the power appropriately named 
by Philo the Aoyos or word; for as man by 
words expresses to others the thoughts and 
purposes of his inner self, so the Logos was God's 
expression of himself to man. It was the wire 
by means of which messages might be sent from 
God to man and from man to God; it was also 
the vice-regent and ambassador of God; the in- 
strument by which He created the world ; and the 
high priest of the human race; a force similar in 



228 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

some respects to the Jewish Wisdom of God and 
the Greek Spirit and Word of God. 

The body was to Philo the prison and burden 
of the soul, the grave and coffin from whose in- 
nate evil man could not escape even for a single 
day. Morality consequently consisted in root- 
ing out all sensuous desires and living a clean, 
honest and simple life. Thus far Philo had fol- 
lowed the signal lights of the Stoics, but in 
carrying out their theory, he trod a path of his 
own which led toward Christianity. 

To become virtuous and happy, he believed 
that man must receive help from God. The soul 
which had been bound to a body by its distance 
from God might by study and discipline rise till it 
could behold His glory and goodness and forget- 
ting self, like a clear pool, reflect the beauty and 
brightness of vision. "His own consciousness 
sinks and disappears in the Divine light and the 
Spirit of God dwells in him and stirs him like the 
strings of a musical instrument.' , To thus behold 
God would bring to human beings the greatest of 
all earthly happiness. One step further only 
would lead to perfection, the death of the body 
and the freedom of the soul. 

This rapid passage over a few points of Philo's 
philosophy will be sufficient to convince the Bible 
student that although the doctrine of the Hel- 
lenist sage had little lasting influence upon either 



HELLENISM AND JUDAISM 229 

Judaism or Hellenism, it paved the way for the 
coming of Christianity. When John, the beloved 
disciple of Christ, was endeavoring to impart to 
the Ephesians, among whom he dwelt, the mes- 
sage of his Lord, he could find no more suitable 
mold for the new doctrine than that already 
familiar to both Jew and Greek, the divine Logos 
as the light, life and well-spring of a restless and 
dissatisfied world. But in his hands, the vague 
and shadowy Logos of Philo became a living and 
loving Being "full of grace and truth," and God a 
tender Father rather than a distant and abstract 
force.* 
* See Edersheim's Life and Times of Jesus. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE JEWS AND THE ROMANS 

When the wishes of Antiochus Epiphanes 
clashed with those of Rome and the emissaries 
from the rival factions met in council on the Egyp- 
tian sea-shore, the Roman envoy enclosed the 
space upon which Antiochus stood with a circle 
drawn in the sand beyond the circumference of 
which the mad monarch might not pass until he 
had first obeyed the ultimatum of Rome "erravfla 
pov\euov" — decide now. 

The decision with which Rome crushed the 
ambitious scheme of the Syrian king was charac- 
teristic of her treatment of her subordinates and 
Judea with other Roman provinces early learned 
the bitter lesson that punishment, sure and terri- 
ble, swiftly followed any transgression of the 
circumscribed limitations imposed by Rome. 
The great temple at Jerusalem was built, osten- 
sibly indeed, with all consideration for Jewish 
prejudices and Pharisaic whims, but at its comple- 
tion, the golden eagle of Rome, doubly hateful as 
a graven image whose presence was forbidden by 
Mosaic law and as a symbol of Roman domi- 

230 



JEWS AND ROMANS 231 

nance, was placed above its most frequented 
entrance. Every fiber of Jewish being protested 
against this insult to Jehovah, Ruler of the uni- 
verse, and when at last Herod was laid low by- 
fatal illness, forty young Pharisees, pupils of the 
respected Rabbis, Judas and Mattathias, climbed 
to the top of Nicanor's gate and hacked the 
golden eagle to pieces with their axes. Such a 
flagrant act of insubordination could not be over- 
looked, though Herod lay upon his death-bed. 
The culprits with their teachers, were dragged 
by Roman soldiers to Jericho,. sentenced by the old 
king, and burned alive. This incident only fore- 
shadowed that which was to come. The history 
of Judea from the death of Herod the Great 
until 70 A. D. is an* oft-repeated story of violent 
(collision between the inflexible Roman and 
irrepressible Jew. "All-powerful Rome coulcl 
destroy Israel, but not pervert it. Israel did 
not give way to Rome to the extent of even a 
single thought." And, although the period 
when Palestine was ruled first by the sons of 
Herod and later by Roman procurators, does not 
properly belong to the interim between the Testa- 
ments, a brief survey of these troubled years is 
given here as necessary to any comprehension of 
the relations existing between the two nations. 

The frequent executions with which Herod 
thinned the ranks of his numerous family com- 



232 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

pelled him to make three wills, the las,t of which 
received the confirmation and approval of Augus- 
tus and governed the destiny of Palestine during 
the first years of the Christian era. By its terms, 
Herod's kingdom was divided among three of 
his surviving sons. The northern provinces were 
bequeathed to Philip who in some .marvelous 
way had escaped the taint of his inheritance and 
environment and for thirty-seven years governed 
his kingdom wisely and well. Galilee and Perea 
became the domain of Antipas well-known to 
Bible history as the sovereign of Jesus and the 
executor of John the Baptist. For thirty-five 
years he maintained the balance between his Jew- 
ish subjects and their Roman sovereigns by a 
craftily feigned allegiance to the interests of 
both. The ambitious scheme of his unlawful 
wife Herodias by whom he was completely dom- 
inated, finally led to his downfall. In 39 A. D., 
he was accused of conspiring against the Roman 
government and was banished to Lyons in Gaul 
where he spent the remainder of his life. Arche- 
laus to whom the provinces of Judea, Idumea, 
and Samaria, had been assigned, was the most 
violent of the three brothers, divorcing and 
marrying wives and removing and appointing 
high priests at will. After nine years of misrule, 
a delegation of Jews and Samaritans appeared 
before Augustus bringing accusations of such a 



JEWS AND ROMANS 233 

serious nature against their ruler that he was 
deposed and condemned to life banishment in 
Gaul. 

Ten years before the banishment of Archelaus, 
an embassy of Jews had begged Augustus to free 
their country from the curse of Herodian rulers 
and to allow them to live according to their own 
laws under the immediate supervision of a Roman 
governor. That request was now granted. 
Judea and subsequently all Palestine was annexed 
to the Roman province of Syria; its government 
was placed in the hands of a Roman procurator 
and it entered the third class of Roman depend- 
encies, those which were particularly difficult to 
govern either on account of their savage state 
or the tenacity with which they clung to their 
native customs. 

The high hopes with which the Jews entered 
upon this change of government were doomed to 
bitter down-fall and disappointment; for while 
the Herods during their long residence in Judea 
had obtained an insight into Jewish character 
and had become convinced of the futility of 
interfering with that which lay nearest their 
hearts, their religious rites, the Jews were now 
exposed to the merciless rapacity of Roman 
officials to whom their religion was, in the words 
of Cicero, a "barbarous superstition" and its 
adherents "a race distinguished for its contempt 



234 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

of the gods." The politics and religion of the 
Romans were inextricably interwoven and 
unstinted devotion to an Unseen Being who 
bestowed no material or political reward upon 
his worshippers seemed to them both grotesque 
and impractical. The Sabbath rest was to them 
only an excuse for indolence and the abstinence 
from swine's flesh the result of an ancestral ven- 
eration for the pig. They resented the persist- 
ent refusal of the Jew to join in the emperor 
worship then prevalent, and the pride with which 
Israelites held themselves aloof from foreigners 
was repaid by the Roman with such scorn and 
contempt that the pathetic sadness with which 
Philo asks for his country-men no better fate than 
to be treated as other men can occasion no 
wonder. 

The procurator lived in Caesarea, occupying 
Herod's palace at Jerusalem only upon Jewish 
feast days when the city swarmed with pilgrims 
and there was most danger of riot and disturb- 
ance. He administered the finances of the prov- 
ince and was commander-in-chief of its military 
forces, answerable only in extreme cases to the 
legate of Syria and the supreme authorities at 
Rome. Civil and criminal cases were as a rule 
left to native and local courts, but the sentence 
of any court including the Sanhedrin, might be 
affirmed or annulled by his decree. Only in cases 



JEWS AND ROMANS 235 

of life and death was it possible for a Roman 
citizen to escape his authority by appealing to 
Cassar. The restrictions which the Jews re- 
sented most bitterly were those imposed upon the 
temple and its belongings, the Roman guard 
stationed in its outer court, the contents of its 
treasury administered by the Roman procurator, 
and most insufferable of all, the beautiful robe of 
the high priest entrusted to the Roman comman- 
dant of the fortress Antonia whence its owners 
were permitted to take it only upon the four 
feast days of the Jewish year. 

It is true that Judaism received the favor and 
protection of many of the Roman emperors. 
The Jews were not obliged to take part in the 
emperor worship which was compulsory in other 
provinces, and the military standards bearing the 
likeness of the emperor were excluded from 
Judea because they were offensive to its citizens. 
On account of their inconvenient habit of Sabbath 
observance, they were granted freedom from mil- 
itary service, and the law which forbade for- 
eigners to enter the inner courts of the temple up- 
on pain of death was strictly enforced even in the 
case of Roman citizens. But all this availed 
little when for the administration of these en- 
actments, the Jews must depend upon Roman 
officials who almost invariably considered Jewish 
life and property their rightful prey, and By 



236 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

making Jewish religion the object of ridicule and 
coarse jests, brought their subjects to such a pitch 
of nervous excitement that the latter resented the 
most reasonable act of the Roman authorities as 
an infringement of the divine rights of God's 
chosen people whom all the other nations of the 
world should serve. 

Excessive and burdensome taxes extorted from 
the Jews had been a feature of the reign of the 
Herods. The suspicions of the people were 
therefore aroused when immediately after the 
appointment of the first procurator, preparations 
were made for readjusting the system of taxes 
according to the Roman method; and the high 
priest had all that he could do to keep the under- 
current of hatred and discontent from breaking 
into open rebellion. As a result of this sup- 
pressed outbreak, the more fanatical of the Phar- 
isees formed themselves into a party called 
Zealots whose only purpose was never to submit 
to Rome and to oppose her authority in every 
way. They kept the cauldron of Jewish hatred 
hot, and the ebullitions of Jewish wrath by which 
Judea was frequently scarred were often occa- 
sioned by the heat of their rebellious ill-will. 

A storm of protest which could not be quelled 
arose when in 26 A. D. the fifth procurator 
Pontius Pilate, set up in Jerusalem the soldier's 
standards hitherto excluded from Judea. As 



JEWS AND ROMANS 237 

soon as the news had been published throughout 
Jerusalem and the surrounding country, a motley 
throng consisting of five thousand men, women, 
and children gathered and set out for Caesarea. 
For five days the palace of the procurator was 
surrounded by a howling and shrieking mob who 
demanded the removal of the offensive standards. 
Pilate tried in vain to silence the throng by de- 
claring that he could not so dishonor the emperor 
as to grant their request. At the end of the 
sixth day, he repeated his refusal in the stadium 
whither he had invited the angry crowd to receive 
his decision. Then the outcries broke forth 
afresh and the soldiers by whom the theater was 
surrounded advanced upon the mob with drawn 
swords; but the Jews baring their necks and 
breasts, signified that they would rather die than 
witness such sacrilege and Pilate, moved by their 
desperation, quietly ordered the removal of the 
ensigns. In the latter part of his term of office, 
Pilate again ventured to place shields bearing 
the name of the emperor but no image, in the 
temple of Herod at Jerusalem. This also the 
Jews refused to endure and a delegation of prom- 
inent men among whom were the four sons of 
Herod brought their protestations to the pro- 
curator. As he remained inflexible, a petition 
was sent to the Roman emperor Tiberius who 
perceiving that Pilate cared less to honor him 



238 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

than to torment the Jews, ordered the tablets 
removed to the temple of Augustus in Caesarea. 
"Thus were the honor of the emperor and the 
ancient customs of the city both preserved." 

Fresh trouble arose when Tiberius was suc- 
ceeded by the half-demented tyrant Caligula who 
actually believed in his own divinity and regarded 
the Jews' refusal to join in emperor worship as 
a personal affront. Heathen altars and images 
in Jamnia were destroyed by the Jews, and to 
avenge the insult, Caligula ordered the prepa- 
ration of a life-sized statue of himself which he 
proposed to set up in the Holy of Holies at 
Jerusalem. The preparation of the statue was 
delayed by the humanity of the Syrian legate 
Petronius and before the order was carried out, 
a powerful advocate appeared to plead the cause 
of the Jews. Agrippa, a son of Aristobulus and 
grandson of Herod and Mariamne, while sowing 
a crop of youthful wild oats in Rome, had become 
the friend and boon companion of Caligula. 
To this old comrade the emperor could refuse 
nothing, and because he begged him not to carry 
out his threat, the temple remained undisturbed. 
Through the influence of Caligula and his suc- 
cessor Claudius, all Palestine became in 41 A. D. 
the united realm of Agrippa and for three short, 
but happy years, the precepts of the Pharisees 



JEWS AND ROMANS 239 

were treated with reverence and the golden age 
of Alexandra returned to Judea. 

The reign of Agrippa had proved that a little 
tact and sympathy might work wonders in Pal- 
estine, but the seven Roman procurators who suc- 
ceeded him made no effort to follow his example, 
but rather did everything in their power to widen 
the already threatening breach beyond repair. 
From the cruelty and injustice of Felix sprang 
the Sicarii, a set of fanatics who received their 
name from the dagger (sica) which they con- 
cealed beneath their cloaks. They mingled with 
the people in public assemblies and on the streets, 
and stabbed Romans and Roman sympathizers, 
deceiving their opponents by the deep grief they 
feigned when their victims fell. The combined 
efforts of political fanatics and the religious fan- 
atics who also infested the country, produced 
wild agitation and unrest. "They persuaded the 
Jews to revolt and parting themselves into dif- 
ferent bodies, lay in wait up and down the country 
and plundered the houses of great men and slew 
the men themselves and set the villages on fire; 
and this till all Judea was filled with their mad- 
ness." The last two procurators were at the 
same time the worst. The avarice of the first, 
Albinus, was proverbial. He considered money- 
grabbing the chief duty and privilege of his office. 



240 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

Private property and public treasure were the 
prey of his incontrollable greed; and for a bribe, 
any criminal, however vicious, might obtain re- 
lease from prison. "Hence the prisons were 
empty and the whole country overrun by rob- 
bers. " The success with which Albinus com- 
mitted infamies encouraged Florus, his successor 
to practise all kinds of crime openly and upon a 
larger scale. Robbing private individuals was 
quite too small a matter to engage his attention. 
Whole communities were robbed and whole cities 
plundered. Robbers who would share their 
booty with him were allowed to carry on their ne- 
farious business without interference. Multi- 
tudes left their homes and fled into foreign prov- 
inces. When Cestius Gallus, the Syrian legate, 
visited Jerusalem during the week of the pass- 
over, he was surrounded by a great throng of 
Jewish pilgrims who besought him with tears in 
their eyes to free them from the intolerable 
cruelty of their governor; and Florus who was 
present, resolved then and there to goad his un- 
happy subjects until they committed the irre- 
parable folly of declaring war against Rome. 
In the confusion of a revolt, his own orime would 
be buried and its consequences escaped. He 
acted upon his conviction and things went rap- 
idly from bad to worse. In Caesarea, public 
worship was openly disturbed; and in Jerusalem 



JEWS AND ROMANS 241 

indignation reached the boiling point when Florus 
pretending that the emperor needed money, stole 
seventeen talents (#15,000.) from the treasury. 
The people flocked to the courts of the temple 
where they filled the air with loud denun- 
ciations of the detested procurator; and 
two wags passed a basket among the crowd 
to collect alms for the destitute governor 
now, as always, an object of Jewish charity. 
Florus was very angry when he heard of 
the jest and the penality he exacted was 
a heavy one. With a company of Roman 
soldiers, he marched upon Jerusalem; and in the 
wholesale plunder and slaughter which took place 
at his command, 3600 men, women, and children, 
including a large number of Roman knights of 
Jewish descent, were scourged and then crucified. 
Even now the leaders of the excited people 
succeeded in restoring order and when Florus 
commanded the rebels to prove their penitence 
and good intentions by meeting and saluting re- 
spectfully two cohorts of Roman soldiers then 
on their way from Caesarea to Jerusalem, they 
were convinced by the priests that it would be 
folly to refuse this medicine, bitter though it 
was. But when the respectful salutation of the 
Jews was received with stony disregard, audible 
protests and complaints against Florus rose from 
the Jewish ranks. This was exactly what Florus 



242 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

had anticipated and the Romans, who had re- 
ceived previous instructions, began to cut 
the malcontents down. At the same time the 
Jews were attacked on the other side by Florus 
and a company of soldiers he had brought from 
Jerusalem. All Jerusalem hastened to join in 
the fray, and against the united violence of the 
Jewish multitude, the Romans were unable to 
stand. During the night the bridges and ap- 
proaches to the temple were destroyed by the 
rebels, and Florus who had hoped to plunder the 
temple withdrew, leaving Jerusalem in charge of 
the Jewish leaders and a cohort of Roman 
soldiers. 

Conflicting reports of the outbreak were sent 
to Cestius Gallus, and a Roman tribune Neapoli- 
tanus was despatched by him to Jerusalem to get 
at the root of the matter. Neapolitanus was so 
impressed by the cordial welcome and kind 
treatment he received that he praised the Jews 
for their good conduct and assured them that all 
might be well if they would only keep the peace. 
After his departure, Agrippa II who had accom- 
panied him, warned the people in a long and elo- 
quent speech against the danger of rebellion. By 
his advice, they restored the approaches to the 
temple and began to collect the unpaid tribute 
money; but when he asked them to respect and 
obey Florus until Caesar could appoint some 



JEWS AND ROMANS 243 

one to take his place, his proposal was received 
with jeers and a shower of stones. The daily 
sacrifice for the Roman emperor was discon- 
tinued and war was declared. 

The sun has never looked down upon a struggle 
more dreadful than that which from 67-70 A. D. 
made the holy land a land of blood and fire. 
Freed from the shackles of Roman power, 
bigoted fanaticism and fiery hatred, like mad 
men loosed from a prison-house, terrorized the 
country with their insane fury and ruled over the 
city so many times heroically defended in the fear 
and love of God. Prudence and self-control 
were scattered to the winds and there was a 
wild outburst of unreasoning passion. Jerusalem 
became a city divided against herself. Son 
rose up against father and father against son. 

Faction after faction, locked in civil strife, 
stained the honor and sapped the strength of the 
holy city; and the most fearful outrages and 
frightful atrocities were committed by Jews 
against Jews before the Romans approached its 
walls. 

The more intelligent Jews, including the 
Herods, Agrippa, and the leading priests and 
Pharisees, realized that war with Rome could 
end in only one way. Since counsel was futile, 
they resolved to restrain the people by force 
from the ruin they would inevitably bring upon 



2M DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

themselves and a conflict between those who 
wished for peace and those who wished for 
war ensued. The war party led by Eleazar, the 
son of Ananias the high priest, took possession 
of the temple fortress; the peace party led by 
Ananias held the citadel, and blood was shed 
daily upon the streets of Jerusalem by the op- 
posed forces of father and son. When, finally, 
a grandson of Judas, the well-known Galilean 
rebel, came with a large force of Sicarii to the 
aid of Eleazar, the peace party was obliged to 
surrender. In hideous delight at their victory, 
the rebels set fire to the beautiful palaces of 
Berenice, Agrippa and Ananias', and the aged 
high priest with his brother was dragged 
from a place of concealment and killed. The 
agitation was increased by a quarrel between the 
Sicarii and the men of Jerusalem; and, in a 
massacre led by Eleazar, his allies were cut down 
without mercy and their leader murdered. 
As a crowning disgrace, the soldiers of the 
Roman garrison, who had been promised a safe 
conduct from the city if they would give up their 
arms, were slain to the last man while honorably 
keeping their word. 

The war had by this time reached every 
city in Palestine. In Caesarea alone, twenty 
thousand Jews were massacred in one hour and 



JEWS AND ROMANS 245 

in all the larger towns, Jews were massacred by 
heathen and heathen by Jews. 

Cestius Gallus with a Roman army, tried in 
vain to capture Jerusalem and restore order. 
His troops were attacked with such violence at 
Bethhoron that their orderly retreat was turned 
into a wild flight; and it was with difficulty that 
a remnant of his army with its leader es- 
caped to Antioch. This was a victory so 
much greater than the most sanguine had 
hoped for that even those who had been 
most opposed to war were drawn for a 
moment into the prevailing current. By common 
consent, Palestine was divided into twelve dis- 
tricts, each commanded by a prominent priest 
or Pharisee. Opposed to these Jewish leaders 
whose hands had never held a weapon and whose 
vocation had been the pursuit of Rabbinical lore 
or service in the temple, was the man* to whom 
the Romans had entrusted the task of subjugating 
Palestine, Vespasian, the ablest and most expe- 
rienced general of his day. The first district 
attacked was Galilee, the defense of which was 
conducted by the historian Josephus, then a 
young scribe of thirty years. In spite of some 
brave fighting on the part of the Jews and the 
cunning, but puerile stratagems of their leader, 
which he relates in his history with the most 



246 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

complacent self-satisfaction, the result of the 
campaign was just what the conservative had 
prophesied. The strongholds of Galilee fell 
one by one into the hands of the Romans. 
Cities were ruthlessly levelled to the ground and 
their inhabitants slain or sold into slavery until 
at the end of 67 A.D., all Galilee had become the 
domain of Rome. 

Gishcala was the last fortress to fall, but the 
night before its surrender, a popular hero, John 
of Gishcala, the impersonation of that savage 
and lawless spirit which for many years had 
found an abiding-place in Galilee, escaped under 
cover of darkness with a company of Zealot 
followers to Jerusalem. The atmosphere which 
he found there, disturbed though it was, seemed 
to John intolerably peaceful and law-abiding and 
he set himself with energy to effect a reformation. 
Harangues in which he pronounced the Romans 
weaklings and denounced the Jewish captains as 
cowards and traitors, so aroused the younger men 
that they would no longer listen to the advice of 
the old and prudent, and again Jerusalem was 
rent with strife between those who wished for 
war and those who wished for peace. Zealots 
from all Judea hastened to Jerusalem to 
join the party of John, and under his leadership 
waged war upon the respectable and well-to-do, 
murdering respected citizens and pillaging their 



JEWS AND ROMANS 247 

houses. With overbearing insolence, they ap- 
pointed Phannias, an» obscure and ignorant 
countryman, high' priest, and installed him in 
office with irreverent mockery. Conditions be- 
came so intolerable that when the true high priest 
Ananos besought the men of Jerusalem to arise 
and overthrow the destroyers, they rallied about 
him with great vigor and the Zealots were 
compelled to retreat to the temple. For a few 
days, only the conscientious scruples of Ananos 
who refused to desecrate the inner courts of the 
temple by shedding blood, stood between John 
and destruction. Then aid came from Idumea 
whither the Zealots had sent for help. Twenty 
thousand wild marauding semi- Jews marched up- 
on Jerusalem and. obtained entrance to the city 
under cover of a heavy storm. A reign of 
horror as dreadful in its atrocities: as the most 
shocking period of the French Revolution com- 
menced with their arrival. The high priests, 
Ananos and JesuS, were killed; citizens of or- 
dinary rank were openly murdered while those of 
higher rank were subjected to the most horrible 
torture in the hope that they might thus be in- 
duced to join the insurgents. Men and women 
dared not mourn for their dead or even give them 
a decent burial. At length, Idumeans and 
Zealots alike tired of butchery and plunder; and 
as an innovation, instituted a mock court. 



248 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

Seventy prominent citizens were summoned to 
judge the wealthy and respected Zacharias. 
When the judges braved the anger of the ma- 
rauders by acquitting the prisoner, two Zealots 
leaped upon him and slew him, crying "Here hast 
thou also our verdict." 

Surfeited with rapine and slaughter, and con- 
vinced that they had been deceived by the Zealots 
whose request for help had been wrapped in a 
"cloak of patriotism,'' the Idumeans finally took 
their departure; but their absence brought no re- 
lief to the unhappy city. The aristocratic party 
was so weakened by losses that it was no longer 
able to oppose the Zealots, who now indulged in 
shocking excesses of every sort. Violence and 
cruelty increased; respectable citizens deserted 
in such large numbers to the Romans that guards 
were stationed by every passage from the city to 
intercept and cut down fugitives ; and while Jeru- 
salem daily suffered fresh horrors, the Sicarii of 
Masada were sweeping through Palestine in 
search of food, leaving behind them a trail of 
desolation, cities in ashes and fields trampled 
and laid waste. 

In the meantime, Vespasian watched from 
without, the suicidal course of the city, awaiting 
with complacency the time when self-inflicted 
wounds should make it his easy prey. The east, 
the south and the west had fallen before him. 



JEWS AND ROMANS 249 

He was preparing for the siege of Jerusalem 
when Nero died, and for a year he was obliged to 
await the order of the new emperor. In 69 A. D., 
he was himself proclaimed emperor by his sol- 
diers and went to Rome to claim his title, leaving 
the war in the hands of his son Titus. 

While Vespasian and his troops rested, there 
was no rest for Jerusalem. In Simon bar Giora, 
a leader of the Sicarii, John had encountered a 
rival as savage and unscrupulous as himself. 
Simon's presence outside the walls of the city 
suggested to the conservative party the "des- 
perate expedient of driving out the devil by Beel- 
zebub.' J An embassy from Jerusalem begged 
Simon to come to the relief of the oppressed city; 
and in April 69 A. D., he entered amidst the en- 
thusiastic applause of its citizens who welcomed 
him as their savior and preserver. And now 
Jerusalem bore a double burden of despotism, 
for neither tyrant was able to overcome the other, 
and the rule of Simon was as barbarous as that 
of John. The latter was driven to the Temple 
Mount which he held until even his own men found 
his tyranny unendurable and a part of them mu- 
tinied under a third leader Eleazar, who took 
possession of the temple proper. Continual war- 
fare raged among the three factions and in their 
rivalry, they foolishly burned great stores of 
grain which should have preserved Jerusalem 



250 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

from famine in time of siege. When the week 
of the passover arrived, John's soldiers entered 
the inner temple disguised as pilgrims and in the 
hand-to-hand fight which followed, Eleazar's 
party was annihilated and Jerusalem was again 
at the mercy of Simon and John. 

In the spring of 70 A. D., while the temple was 
resonant with the din of civil strife, Titus had 
marched upon Jerusalem and stood with his 
Roman legions before its walls. Three times 
already he had faced the violent Jewish sorties 
with which he was to become familiar and had 
narrowly escaped capture and defeat. The ve- 
hemence of these dashing sallies banished all hope 
of taking the city by storm. The Romans must 
break down the walls with their battering-rams 
and push their way inch by inch toward the heart 
of the city. The difficulty of the undertaking was 
increased by the location of Jerusalem and its 
massive fortifications. The city was built upon 
two hills. On the large western hill lay the 
Upper City; on the small eastern hill the Lower 
City sometimes called the Acra. North of the 
Acra was the temple mount, itself a fortress of 
tremendous strength, flanked on the northern side 
by the fortress Antonia. On the west, south, 
and east, the walls which surrounded the city 
stood on the edge of steep precipices ; and on the 



JEWS AND ROMANS 251 

north where the ground was low, three successive 
walls prevented the entrance of the enemy. It 
was before the outer of these walls that Titus 
stationed his army and erected his battering-rams. 
For fifteen days the engines hurled their pro- 
jectiles against the outer wall before a breach 
was effected through which it was possible to 
enter. Five more days elapsed before the second 
wall yielded, and for four more the Jews covered 
the opening with their bodies. Then the 
Romans forced an entrance and captured the 
suburb which lay beyond it. Already the city's 
store of food was nearly spent and famine and 
starvation had become the companions of murder 
and rapine. The common danger had made 
Simon and John allies and to procure necessary 
food for themselves, their soldiers ransacked the 
houses of private citizens and by awful torture, 
compelled them to reveal the hiding-place of 
their last handful of meal or their last loaf of 
bread. Rather than endure the dangers and pri- 
vations of the city, men and woman ventured 
in large numbers outside its walls; but flight 
brought them no cessation of horror, for de- 
serters were captured, tortured, and crucified by 
the Romans. When Titus could not obtain 
sufficient wood for crosses, the hands of the fugi- 
tives were cut off and they were driven back into 



252 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

the city to become the victims of Simon and John 
who were always ready to hunt down friends of 
Rome. 

Still there was no thought of yielding when 
Josephus was sent by Titus to offer the famine- 
stricken city terms of surrender, and the Romans 
began to erect ramparts against the third and 
last wall which barred them from the Lower 
City. Seventeen days of hard labor had been 
consumed in the preparation of the four earth- 
works, two of which were levelled against the 
fortress Antonia and two against the walls of the 
Lower City. They were almost completed 
when with tremendous clatter, they collapsed and 
burst into flames, a catastrophe cunningly man- 
aged by Simon and John who had undermined 
them and arranged beneath them an unsub- 
stantial foundation of crossed beams which they 
daubed with pitch and bitumen and set on fire. 
The event was a critical one for both Jews and 
Romans. To procure wood for the earth-works, 
the country had been stripped of timber for miles 
around. It would be difficult to obtain material 
for rebuilding them; but without ramparts, it was 
impossible to level the wall. If they should be 
destroyed a second time, the siege must fail. A 
council of war was held and the Roman com- 
manders decided that their reconstruction would 
at present be attended by too great risks. 



JEWS AND ROMANS 253 

Famine must be allowed to carry on the work of 
destruction and with incredible speed the Roman 
soldiers built a stone wall around the entire city, 
the vigilance of whose thirteen watch-towers 
none might escape. For two and one-half 
months famine did its ghastly work. According 
to Josephus, 115,880 corpses were carried out 
of one gate of the city in the period from April 
14 to July 1; and many others were cast down 
from the walls into ravines beneath by relatives 
of the deceased. Now John ventured for the 
first time to distribute the sacred wine and oil 
among the sufferers and the hard heart of Titus 
was touched. The Romans were permitted to 
receive and care for starving refugees before they 
were sold into slavery. It was unfortunately dis- 
covered that one of these poor creatures had 
swallowed his last possession, a few pieces of 
gold, and in one night the greedy Roman soldiers 
cut up two thousand of his unhappy comrades. 
Titus learned of the outrage and forbade it, but 
was unable to prevent its continuance. 

In July the wearisome task of erecting ram- 
parts was again undertaken by the Roman sol- 
diers. The wood required for their construction 
had to be conveyed ten miles and twenty-one days 
of hard labor were spent in their erection. When 
they were completed, the Jews were so weakened 
by famine that they were unable to offer vigorous 



254 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

opposition; and a sally conducted by John was 
more easily repulsed than former sorties of the 
same character. On the second of July the wall 
fell, but the Romans scaled it only to discover that 
the indefatigable John had erected another be- 
hind it. After repeated attempts, the Romans 
scaled this temporary wall and endeavored to 
take the temple by storm, but were so violently 
repulsed that they could hold only the Lower 
City and the fortress Antonia which they soon 
razed to the ground. Although wood must 
be brought a distance of twelve miles, ram- 
parts were again constructed and the batter- 
ing-ram again did its dismal work; but the 
foundations of the temple stood firm. Some 
other method of forcing an entrance must 
be pursued and at the command of Titus, 
his soldiers set fire to the great gates. The 
fire spread to the cloisters and continued for 
two days. The safety of the temple was threat- 
ened before Titus ordered his men to quench the 
flames, a difficult task on account of the irritating 
attacks to which they were constantly exposed. 
Finally in a fit of exasperation, a soldier plucked 
a brand from the burning corridor and tossed it 
into the temple proper. Soldier after soldier 
followed his example and Titus, who was unable 
to restore order, had barely time to rescue the 
sacred vessels and enter the Holy of the Holies. 



JEWS AND ROMANS 255 

Then fire and sword did their dreadful work and 
the pride of Israel went down in flames. Upon 
the smoking ashes of the sanctuary long sacred to 
Jehovah, the Romans soldiers offered a sacrifice 
to Jupiter Captolinus and saluted their com- 
mander as imperator. In the days which fol- 
lowed women and children, young and old, priests 
and people, became the victims of the conquerors ; 
and the prominent buildings of the Lower City 
were set on fire at the command of Titus. In the 
meantime John and Simon, who had escaped to 
the Upper City, were robbing the emaciated sur- 
vivors of their few remaining possessions. They 
refused to surrender and another siege must be 
undertaken before the Roman conquest of Jeru- 
salem was complete. This last pathetic strong- 
hold of the Jews, now a city of the dead, soon fell ; 
and the few who had survived sword and famine 
were hunted down. The aged and infirm were 
slain and the young and strong sold into slavery. 
Twelve handsome young Jews were reserved to 
grace the triumph of Titus ; and John and Simon, 
driven by hunger from the subterranean passages 
in which they had taken refuge, were also sent to 
Rome to march side by side in the triumphal 
parade. 

The conquest of Herodium, Macharus and 
Masada, the three strongholds still in the hands 
of the Jews, was completed in 73 A. D. and at their 



256 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE ERA 

fall, the Jews as a nation, ceased to exist. The 
promised land was confiscated by the Roman 
Emperor and its inhabitants were compelled to 
deliver the tithes formerly used for the support 
of the temple to the imperial treasury. "The 
Captoline Jupiter was to take the place of the 
God of Israel." 

"Rome has long since passed away and only- 
ruins tell us of its glory, but Israel is still, after 
two thousand years, what it was. It has survived 
all the vicissitudes of history, all the changes of 
ages, ever consistent, comparable in the life of 
nations to one of those erratic boulders, which 
wear out the tooth of time and mock at eternity, a 
strange yet imposing spectacle, a living witness 
of long-vanished milleniums." 

But in spite of the persistence with which 
Israel, long before her final fall, turned her face 
toward the past, she had unconsciously fulfilled 
her destiny. Before her temple fell and her 
people became wanderers and outcasts upon the 
face of the earth, the religion of revelation which 
it had been her mission to protect, had been trans- 
ferred to the saner and gentler hands of the 
early Christians. Through Christianity, her 
child and lieir, Judaism has touched countless 
millions; Greek and Roman, Slav and Teuton, 
Goth and Celt find guidance and inspiration upon 
the pages of the Old Testament, the law and the 
prophets of the ancient Jew. 



APPENDIX 

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 
CHAPTER SUMMARIES 
REFERENCES 



APPENDIX 
PARTI. THE PERSIAN PERIOD. 538-335 B.C. 

Cyrus, 538 b. c. 

The first return, 536 B. c. 
Cambyses, 528 B.C. 
Darius I, 521 b. c. 

Haggai, 520 b. c. 

Zechariah, 520 B. c. 

Completion of the temple, 515 B.C. 
Xerxes I, 485 b. c. 
Artaxerxes, 464 b. c. 

Malachi, 500-458 (?) B.C. 

Return of Ezra, 458 b. c. 

Return of Nehemiah, 444 b. c. 

Birthday of Judaism, Oct. 24, 444 B. C. 

The Samaritan secession, 432 (?) B.C. 

CHAPTER I. EZRA AND NEHEMIAH 
Outline Summary 

Characteristics of Ezra and Nehemiah. 
The Babylonian Colony. 
The Colony at Jerusalem. 
The return of Ezra, 458 B. C. 
The attempted reforms of Ezra, 458-457 B.C. 
The return of Nehemiah, 444 b. c. 
259 



260 



A NEGLECTED ERA 



Work of Nehemiah. 

Reading the law. 

The birthday of Judaism, Oct. 24, 444 B. c. 

The Samaritan secession. 

References: Haggai 1, 1-15; Malachi 1, 11, 7-17; 
in, 7-10; Nehemiah i-xiii; Ezra i-x; I Esdras 8 & 9; 
Ecclus. xlix, 13; II Maccabees 11, 13. Josephus Ant. 
XI, v. 



PART II. THE GREEK PERIOD. 333-160 b.c. 
Alexander the Great. 336-323 b. c. 



Kings of Egypt 

Ptolemy I, Lagi, 
323 B.C. 

Ptolemy II, Phila- 
delphia, 285 b. c. 

Ptolemy III, Eu- 

ERGETESl, 246 B.C. 



Jewish High Priests Kings of Syria 
Jaddua, 350 B.C. Seleucus I, Nica- 

TOR, 301 B. C. 

Onias I, 324 B.C. Antiochus I, So- 

TER, 280 B.C. 

Simon I, the Just, Antiochus II, The- 
300 B.C. os, 261 B.C. 



Ptolemy IV, Phi- 

LOPATOR, 221 B.C. 

Ptolemy V, Epiph- 

ANES, 204 B.C. 

Ptolemy VI, Phi- 

LOMETOR, l8l B.C. 

Ptolemy VII, Phy- 

scon, 146 B.C. 
Euergetes II. 



Eleazar, 242 b.c. Seleucus II, 246 

B.C. 

Manasseh, 260 b. c. Seleucus III, 227 

B.C. 

Onias II, 233 b.c. Antiochus III, 
the Great, 223 

B.C. 

Simon II, 219 b.c. Seleucus IV, Phi- 
lop ator, 187 b. c 
Onias III, 195 b. c. Antiochus IV, Epi- 

JASON, 175 B. C. PHANES, 176 B. C. 



APPENDIX 261 

CHAPTER II. THE ORIGIN OF HELLENISM 
Outline Summary 
Alexander the Great (reigned from 336 to 3^3 

B.C.) 

His conquest of Syria, 333 B. C. 

His legendary meeting with the high priest. 

His plan for Hellenising the East. 

Founding of Alexandria, 332 B. c. 
Socrates, 470-399 b. c. 

His life and philosophy. 
The philosophy of Epicurus, 337-270 B.C. 

References: Daniel 11, 39-40; vm, 5-7, xxi; I Mac- 
cabees, 1, 1-5; Josephus Ant. XI, vm. 



CHAPTER III. PALESTINE TRIBUTARY TO 
THE PTOLEMIES. 301-198 b. c. 

Outline Summary 

Prosperity of the Jews. 

Jews in Alexandria. 

The progress of Hellenism. 

The synagogue and the yearly tribute. 

Power and character of the high priests. 

Simon II, 219 b. c. 
Hellenism in literature. 

The Septuagint commenced, 285-247 B.C. 

Ecclesiasticus, 200 b. c.(?) 

Ecclesiastes, 200 b. c.( ?) 



262 A NEGLECTED ERA 

Wisdom of Solomon, between 150 and 100 

B.C.(?) 

References: Daniel vin, 8, 21-22 ; Dan. xi, 4-20; Ec- 
clesiasticus 50; Josephus Ant. XII, i-iv, III Macca- 
bees. 
Compare Ecclesiasticus xxvin, 12-24 with James 1, 1-13. 
" xxviii, 1-6 " Matt, vi, 12-15. 

" " xi, 18-19 " Luke xii, 16-21. 

H " xxi, 10 " Matt, vn, 13. 

Wisdom vii, 23-29 " John 1, 1-12. 



CHAPTER IV. THE PERSECUTION 

Outline Summary 

Palestine tributary to the Seleucids, 198 B. c. 

The accession of Antiochus Epiphanes, 176 B.C. 

The attack upon the temple treasury. 

The high priest Onias (died 172 B.C.) 

A Jewish temple in Egypt, 160 B. c. 

Treachery of Jason and Menelaus. 

The persecution, 170-168 B.C. 

The revolt under Mattathias Maccabeus, 168 B.C. 

Death of Mattathias, 167 B.C. 

The book of Daniel (appeared about 166 B.C.) 

References: Daniel vm, 9-14, 23-26; xi, 21-45; 
Psalms xliv, lxxiv, lxxix, lxxxiii*; I Maccabees 1, 

♦The dates of individual psalms is a difficult and much dis- 
cussed question. Cheyne assigns twenty-five psalms to the 
Maccabean period, Hitzig and Olhausen all the psalms from 
73-150. A larger number of scholars believe that the num- 
ber of Maccabean Psalms cannot be large and claim internal 
evidence for Psalms 44, 74 and 79, sometimes adding Psalms 
60, 83 and iz8. 



APPENDIX 263 

10-64; 11, 1-70; II Maccabees, 1, 7-8; m-vn; Josephus 
Ant. XII, v-vi; IV Maccabees. 



CHAPTER V. JUDAS MACCABEUS 

Outline Summary 

Character of Judas Maccabeus. 
His first victories. 

Samaria, Bethhoron, and Emmaus, 166 B.C. 
Bethzur, 165 B.C. 

Rededication of the temple and the feast of the dedica- 
tion, 165 b. c. 
Campaign against the surrounding small nations, 164 

B.C. 

Battle of Bethzachariah. 

Lysias and Demetrius, B. c. 163-162. 

Treaty with Rome, 162 B. c. 

Second battle of Bethhoron or Adasar, 161 B. c. 

Battle of Eleasa and death of Judas, 161 B. c. 

Judas and Hellenism. 

References: I Maccabees, 3-9, 1-22; II Maccabees, 
8-15; Josephus Ant. XII, vii-xi. 



264 



A NEGLECTED ERA 



PART III. THE ROMAN PERIOD. 

1 60 B. C.-70 A. D. 



Roman Leaders 

Scipio Africanus II, 148 B.C. 

The Gracchi, 133-121 b.c. 

Marius, 108-86 B.C. 

Sulla, 87-78 b.c. 

Cicero, 63 b.c. 

Pompey, 70-48 B.C. 

The First Triumvirate, Pom- 

PEY, CRASSUS & CJESAR, 60 B. C. 

Cesar, Imperator, 46-44 B - c - 



Rulers of the Jews 

Jonathan Maccabeus, 160- 

143 b. c. 
Simon Maccabeus, 143-135 b.c. 
John Hyrcanus, 135-106 b.c. 
Aristobulus I* 106-105 B - c « 
Alexander Jannaeus, 105- 

76 B.C. 
Alexandra, 76-67 B.C. 
Rivalry of Hyrcanus and 
Aristobulus II, 67-63 b.c. 

(Hyrcanus II, High Priest 

63-40 b. c. 
Antipater, ruler, 63-43 B. c. 



The Second Triumvirate, Herod and Phasael, tetrachs, 

Octavius, Antonius & Lepi- 43-40 b. c. 

DUS, 43 B.C. ANTIGONUS, 40-37 B.C. 

Octavius Augustus, Emperor, Herod, 37-4 b.c. 

31 B.C. to 14 A. D. 

Kings of Syria 

Antiochus V, Eupator, 164 Seleucus V, 126 B.C. 

b.c. Antiochus IX, Cyzicenus, 

Demetrius I, Soter, 162 b.c. 116-95 b.c. 



Alexander Balas, 150 b. c. 

Demetrius II, Nicator, first 

reign 145-140 b. c. 
Antiochus VI, Dionysus, 145- 

143 b.c. 
Tryphon, usurper, 143 B.C. 

Antiochus VII, Sidetes, 138 

B.C. 

Demetrius II, second reign, 

129-126 b. c. 
Antiochus VIII, Grypus, 126 

B.C. 



Seleucus VI, Epiphanes 

Nicator, 96-95, b.c. 
Antiochus X, Eusebes, 95- 

8 3 (?) B.C. 
Antiochus XI, Epiphanes 

Philadelphus, 95 b. c. 
Philip I, 95-83 b.c. 

Demetrius III, Eukairos, 95- 

88 b.c. 
Antiochus XII, Dionysus 

Epiphanes, 86-80 (?) b.c. 
Antiochus XIII, Asiaticus, 

69-65 B.C. 
Philip, II 



Syria invaded by Tigranes, the Parthian, 83 B.C. 
Syria conquered by Pompey, 64 b. c. 



APPENDIX 265 

CHAPTER VI. PALESTINE, AN INDEPEND- 
ENT KINGDOM 

Outline Summary 

The ascendancy of Jonathan Maccabeus, 160-143 B.C. 

His relations with Rome and with Syria. 
Simon Maccabeus, 143-135 B. c. 

Office of high priest and king vested in one person. 

Destruction of the Syrian garrison, 142 B. C 

Renewal of the treaty with Rome. 
John Hyrcanus, 135-106 b. c. 

His conquests of the Moabites, the Samaritans and 
the Edomites. 

The Jews and the Samaritans. 

The Pharisees and the Sadducees, 109 B. C. 
Decadence of the Asmonean Monarchs. 

Aristobulus I, 106-105 b. c. 

Alexander Jannaeus, 105-76 B. C. 

Queen Alexandra, 76-67 b. c. 

References: I Maccabees ix, 23-16; Josephus Ant. 
XIII, i-xvi; The Jews and the Samaritans, Ezra iv; 
Nehemiah iv; Luke ix, 52-56; John iv ? 9; Luke x, 
30-37; xvii, 15-17. 

Josephus Ant. IX, xiv, 3; X, ix; XI, vin, 6 & 7; 
XIII, ix, 1. 

CHAPTER VII. THE RIVAL CLAIMANTS 
FOR THE JEWISH THRONE 

Outline Summary 

Characteristics of Hyrcanus and Aristobulus II. 
Aristobulus II seizes the kingdom, 67 b. c. 



266 A NEGLECTED ERA 

Influence of Antipater. 

Civil war between Hyrcanus and Aristobulus II, 67 to 

63 b. c. 
Intervention of Pompey, 63 b. c. 
Siege and capture of Jerusalem, 63 B. c. 
Loss of Jewish independence, 63 b. c. 
Captivity of Aristobulus II. 

First Jewish settlement in Rome. 
Escape and insurrection of Aristobulus II and his sons, 

57-55 b. c. 
The proconsul Gabinius divides Judea into five parts, 57 

B.C. 

Antipater is made procurator of Judea, 47 B. c. 

Death of Aristobulus II and his son Alexander, 49 B. C. 

References: Josephus Ant. XIV, i-viii. 



CHAPTER VIII. HEROD THE GREAT 

Outline Summary 

Character of Herod the Great. 

His trial before the Sanhedrin, 47 b. C. 

Death of Caesar, 44 b. c. 

Death of Antipater, 43 B. c. 

Herod and Phaseal appointed tetrarchs of Judea, 

43 b. c. 
Herod's war with Antigonus and the Parthians, 42-37 

B.C. 

His flight to Rome. 
Herod made King of the Jews by the Roman Senate, 40 

B.C. 

His marriage to Mariamne, 38 B. C. 



APPENDIX 267 

Capture of Jerusalem, 37 B. c. 

First years of his reign. 

Death of Aristobulus III, the young high priest, 35 

B. c. 
Breach between Herod and Mariamne. 
Execution of Mariamne, 29 b. c. 

" Mariamne's sons, 6 B. C. 
Birth of Jesus Christ, s(?) B.C. 
Death of Herod, 4 b. c. 
Policy of Herod's reign. 
His public works. 
The Jewish temple, begun 20 B.C. 

References: Matt, n, 1-18; Josephus Ant. XIV, ix, 
xi-xvi. XV-XVII, viii. 



PART IV. DEVELOPMENTS OF THE AGE 



CHAPTER IX. THE OLD TESTAMENT 
CANON AND THE TALMUD 

The reverence of the Jews for the Torah. 

Old Testament books grouped 

The Pentateuch recognized as sacred, 432 B.C. 

The Prophets recognized as sacred, 200 b. c. 

Hagiographa recognized as sacred, 2nd century A. D. 

The origin of the oral tradition. 

The Halacha. 

The Haggadah. 

The Mishna completed, about 160 A. D. 



268 A NEGLECTED ERA 

The Palestinean Talmud probably completed about the 

last quarter of the 4th century. 
The Babylonian Talmud edited 375-499 A. D. closed the 

beginning of the 6th century. 

References: Deut. iv, 2; vi, 6-9; Psalms xix, 7-8; 
cxix; John v, 39; Romans in, 1-2. 



CHAPTER X. SCHOOL AND SYNAGOGUE 

Outline Summary 

Education a necessity on account of legalism. 
Traditions in regard to education. 

First schools for Hebrew boys, 1st and 2nd century A. D. 
Teaching the practice of the law. 

The Synagogue. 
Its origin. 

Position, construction, and furniture. 
Officials of the synagogue. 
Services of the synagogue. 
A Jewish sermon. 

References: Proverbs in, 13-18 ; iv, 1-9 ; I Maccabees 
i> 56; Josephus Ant. XX, xi, 2. Life of Josephus 
Par. 2. Josephus Ant. XII, rv, 6. Psalm lxxiv, 8; 
Matt, iv, 23 ; vi, 2-5 ; x, 17 ; Luke iv, 16-20; vni, 41* 



APPENDIX 269 

CHAPTER XL THE ABSURDITIES OF 
LEGALISM 

Outline Summary 

Sabbath observance. 

Bearing a burden upon the Sabbath. 

Kinds of work prohibited. 

Rules for Friday evening. 

Concessions. 
Laws of cleanness and uncleanness. 

Laws governing contact with Gentiles. 

Laws governing dishes and utensils. 

Laws governing water used for purification. 
Laws of prayer. 

Time of prayer. 

Salutations during prayer. 

Grace before eating. 
Outward symbols of duty. 

Zizith, phylacteries, and Mezuah. 
Evasions of the law. 

References!: Jer. vn, 1-7; Amos, v, 21-24; Matt. 6, 
1-7; Mk. ii, 23-28; 111, 1-5; vn, 1-20; Luke xvn, 
20-21. 

CHAPTER XII. THE SCRIBES, THE PHAR- 
ISEES, THE SADDUCEES, AND THE 
ESSENES 

Outline Summary 

The scribes. 

Their position in Jewish society. 



270 A NEGLECTED ERA 

Their recompense for services. 

Scribes as legislators, judges and preachers* 

Famous scribes, Hillel and Shammai, 34 B. c. 
The Pharisees (first mentioned 109 B.C.). 

Development of the sect. 

Their ideals and beliefs. 

Their fraternity. 
The Sadducees (first mentioned 109 B. c.).. 

Their ideals and beliefs. 

The difference between the Pharisees and the Sad- 
ducees. 
The Essenes (existed from about no B. c. to 70 A. D.) 

Probation of Essenes. 

Communism among the Essenes. 

Their daily routine. 

Their integrity. 

Their religious belief. 

References: II Sam. vm, 17. I Kings iv, 3. II 
Kings xxn, 8. Ezra vn, 6. Jer. xxxvi, 6, 10. 
Matt, v, 20; xxiii, 1-36. Mark xii, 38-40. Luke v, 
30-35. Luke vn, 30-50. Luke xvm, 9-14: John 
III, 1-2 1. John vn, 50-52. Matt, xxii, 23-32; Acts 
xxm, 8. John xix, 39. Josephus Ant. XIII, 5 & 6. 
Josephus Ant. XVIII, 1, 2-6. Josephus' Jewish War 
II, VIII. 



CHAPTER XIII. HELLENISM AND JUDAISM 

Outline Summary 

Hellenism in Palestine, 4 B. C. 
Greek words. 



APPENDIX , 271 

Greek architecture. 
Greek customs. 
Hellenism excluded from Jewish religion. 

The Greek Bible in Palestine. 
Judaism in Alexandria. 
Accusations against it. 
Books written to prove that the Bible contained 

best elements of Greek philosophy. 
Aristobulus, 175-150 B.C. 

Sibylline books, Psalms of Solomon, Book of Enoch 
and Book of Jubilees. 
Philo, 2 b. C.-50 A. D. 

His philosophy and works. 
The Aoyos or word. 

References: John 1, 1-14; Colossians 11, 8; The Wis- 
dom of Solomon 1-19; Josephus Ant. XVIII, viii, I. 



CHAPTER XIV. THE JEWS AND THE 
ROMANS 

Outline Summary 

Relationship of the Jews and the Romans. 
The sons of Herod the Great. 

Herod Antipas (exiled 39 A. d.). Herod Archelaus 

(deposed 6 a. d.). Herod Philip (died 33 a. d.). 
Judea under the Roman procurators, 6-66 A. D. 

The power of the procurator. 

The zealots. 

Pontius Pilate, procurator, 26-36 A. D. 

Agrippa I, King of Judea 41-44 A. d. 



272 A NEGLECTED ERA 

Felix, 52 A. D.-60 a. D. Festus, 60-62 A. D. Al- 

binus 62-64 a. d. 
The Sicarii. 

Gessius Floras, 64-66 A. D. 
War against Rome, 66 a. d. 
Civil strife between the war party and the peace 

party. 
Victory over Cestius Gallus, 66 a. d. 
Hostilities commenced, 67 a. d. 
Subjugation of Galilee, 67 a. d. 
Civil war between John of Gishcala and Ananos, 

the high priest. 
Simon bar Giora leader of the Sicarii. 
Siege of Jerusalem by Titus, 70 a. d. 
The temple burned and the city destroyed, 70 A. D. 

References: Luke ix, 7-9; xin, 31-32; xxm, 1-26. 
Matt, xiv, 1-12. Acts xii, 1-7, 18-23. Matt, xxvii, 
11-24. John xviii, 28-40; xix, 1-15. Acts xxm, 
23-35; xxiv-xxvi. Josephus Ant. XVII, ix-xiii; 
XVIII, XIX, XX. Josephus' Jewish War. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Acra, 250 

Albinus : Roman procurator, 

239, 240 
Alcimus, 77, 78, 90 
Agrippa, Herod I, 238 
Agrippa, Herod II, 242 
Alexander, Balas, 92 
Alexander the Great, 25-29, 

35, 36 
Alexander, Jannaeus, 105, 106 
Alexander: son of Aristob- 
ulus II, 109, 120, 121, 122 
Alexandra I, 105, 107 
Alexandra II, 133, 135, 138 
Alexandreum, 116, 121 
Alexandria: most important 
meeting place of the Greek 
and Jew, 37-40, 218-229; 
Septuagint translated in, 
44.46 
Allegorical interpretation, 222, 

225 
Amhaarez, 205 
Ananias: high priest, 244 
Ananos: high priest, 247 
Antigonus, son of Aristobu- 
lus II: his insurrection, 
I2i ; alliance with Parthians 
and capture of Jerusalem, 
128, 130-132 
Antioch: Jews in, 50, 51 
Antiochus Epiphanes: charac- 
ter, 52, 53 ; attempt to Hel- 
lenize the Jews, 55, 56; 
persecution of Jews, 58-61 ; 
death, 74 
Antiochus Eupator, 74 
Antiochus VI, 92 



Antiochus Sidetes, 97, 98 
Antiochus; teacher of Cicero, 

215 
Antiochus the Great, 50 
Antipater I, no, in, 115, 122, 

126, 127 
Antipater: son of Herod the 

Great, 128, 139 
Antonia: castle or fortress, 

235, 250, 252, 254 
Apocrypha: character of, 2, 3; 

admitted to the Septuagint, 

46 ; two books of, 46, 47, 48 ; 

attitude of Jews toward, 217 
Apollonius, 59, 67 
Aretas: Arabian chief, in, 

"3 

Aristeas, 221 

Aristobulus I, 104, 105 

Aristobulus II: seizes the 
kingdom, 109; deposed and 
conquered by Pompey, 113- 
120; leads an insurrection, 
I2i ; is poisoned, 122 

Aristobulus III, 133, 134 

Aristobulus: author, 221, 223 

Architecture, 124, 143-149, 215 

Aristotle, 35, 218, 224 

Arithmetic: taught in Jewish 
schools, 168, 169 

Artaxerxes, 9, 16 

Asmon : house of, 63 ; down- 
hill course of, 104; devotion 
of Jews to, 128 

Augustus, 136, 143 

Avaran: surname of Eleazar 
Maccabeus, 76 



275 



276 



INDEX 



Babylon: captivity at, n; 

colony in, n, ia 
Bacchides: Nicanor's succes- 
sor, 90, 91 
Baths: public, 143 
Battering-rams 74, 117, 131, 

251, 254 
Bearing a burden on the Sab- 
bath, 181, 182, 192, 193 
Bethhoron: first battle of, 67 
Bethhoron: second battle of, 80 
Bethhoron: third battle of, 245 
Bethsura: battle of, 71 
Bethzacharias : battle of, 75, 76 
Bethzur, 73, 75, 77 
Birthday: of Judahism, 19 
Brigands in Galilee, 125, 131 
Books: sacred — See Scrolls 

Caesar, 121, 122 

Caesarea, 144, 234, 244 

Caligula, 238 

Canonical, 153 

Canon: Old Testament, forma- 
tion of, 155-157 

Captivity: See Babylon 

Cassius, 126, 127 

Cestius Gallus, 240, 242, 245 

Chaber, 205 

Chamber of Squares, 148 

Chassidim: the faithful or 
pious, 102, 203 

Christ: birth of, 149 

Claudius, 238 

Cleopatra, 129, 130, 133, 135, 
136, 143 

Coins, 95, 102 

Colonnades of the temple, 147 

Corban, 194 

Cornelius, 117 

Court of the Gentiles, 147 

Court of the Men, 147, 148 

Court of the Priests, 147, 148 

Court of the Women, 147, 148 

Crassus, 121 

Cypros, 136, 144 



Cyrus, 11 

Daniel : book of, 27, 63 ; quota* 

tions from, 25, 51 
Damascus, 114 
Daphne: temple of, 57 
Demetrius I, 92 
Demetrius II, 92, 94 
Demetrius Eukairos, 106 
Dependencies: third class of 

Roman, 233 
Dispersion, 38, 218, 120 
Divorce, 13, 15, 194 
Dok, 97 
Doris, 128 

Ecclesiastes, 47, 48, 156, 157 

Ecclesiasticus, 42-44, 46, 47 

Edom: See Idumea 

Education, 166-169 

Eighteen : benedictions, see 
Shemoneh Esreh 

Elders of the synagogue, 174 

Eleasa: battle of, 81, 90 

Eleazar Maccabeus, 76 

Eleazar: a martyr, 62 

Eleazar: a Pharisee, 104 

Eleazar: leader of war party, 
244 

Eleazar: leader in war against 
Rome, 249 

Eliashib, 20 

Emmaus: battle of, 68-70 

Enoch: book of, 224 

Ensigns: See Images 

Epicurus, 35 

Essenes, 208-212 

Esther: book of, 157 

Ezra: character of, 9-11; 
return of, 14; attempted re- 
form of, 14-16; reading the 
law, 18, 19 

Feast days, 169, 170, 179, 234 
Feast of dedication, 72, 73 
Feast of Hercules, 56 



INDEX 



277 



Feast of tabernacles, 19, 93, 

105, 106, 170 
Felix: Roman procurator, 239 
Florus: Roman procurator, 

240-242 

Galilee, 125, 131, 245, 246 
Games: public, 56, 215 
Garrison: Syrian in Jeru- 
salem, 59, 73, 77, 93, 94, 95 
Gates of temple, 148, 230, 231 
Gazara, 93 
Gemara, 162 

Genesis: commentary on, 225 
Gerousia, 41 
Gishcala, 246 
Gorgias, 68, 69 
Grace: before eating, 190 
Greek: culture See Hellenism 
Greek: language, 39, 40, 216. 
Gymnasiums, 56, 143 

Haggadah, 160, 161 

Haggai, 13 

Halacha, 158-161 

Hananiel, 133 

Kazan, 173, 175 

Healing: on the Sabbath, 185 

Heliopolis, 57 

Heliodorus, 54 

Hellenism: origin of, 28, 29; 
progress of, 39, 40, 51; 
checked by persecution, 61 ; 
Judas Maccabeus' attitude 
toward, 82-84; history of 
213-229 

Hellenists, 55, 218 

Herod Agrippa I: See 
Agrippa I 

Herod Agrippa II: See 
Agrippa II 

Herod Antipas, 232 

Herod Archelaus, 232, 233 

Herod Philip, 232 

Herod "The Great" charac- 
ter, 123-125; trial before 
Sanhedrin, 125, 126; mar- 



riage, 128, 131, i34- x 37; 

war with Antigonus, 129- 

132; policy of reign, 141- 

143 ; public works, 143-149 
Herodium, 129, 144, 145 
Hesiod, 223 
"Hidden": books See Apoc- 

hrypha 
High priest, 41, 42, 102, 119, 

206 
Hillel, 201, 202 
Historical: books of Old 

Testament, 155 
Holy of Holies, 118, 119, 149 
Holy Place, 148, 149 
Hyrcanus I: See John Hyr- 

canus 
Hyrcanus II, 108, 109, 115, 

117, 119, 122, 125, 126, 129, 

I3i> 132, 135 

Idumea (or Edom), 73, 74, 

99, no, 247, 248 
Images, 216, 235, 236, 237, 238 
Immortality: Jewish belief in, 

47, 48, 83, 203, 207, 228 
Interpretation of the law, 158- 

163 
Island of Pharos, 45 
Isopoity, 38 
Issus, 26 

Jaddua, 27 

Jason, 55-58 

Jericho, 134, 136, 143 

Jerusalem: rebuilt, 12, 13; 
plundered, 38, 59; walls 
razed, 77 ; besieged by 
Aretas, in, 112; beseiged 
by Pompey, 116-119; cap- 
tured by the Parthians, 129; 
recaptured by Herod the 
Great, 131; besieged, cap- 
tured and destroyed by the 
Romans, 243-255 

Jesus: the son of Sirach, 46 

Jesus: high priest, 247 



278 



INDEX 



John Hyrcanus, 97-99, 101- 

104 
Jonathan Maccabeus, 74, 90- 

93 

Joseph: brother of Herod the 
Great, 130 

Joseph: uncle of Herod the 
Great, 135, 136 

John of Gishcala, 246, 249- 
252, 253, 255 

Jubilees, Book of, 224 

Judas Maccabeus: his charac- 
ter, 66, 67; victories, 67-71, 
73, 80; restoration of the 
temple, 71, 72; defeat and 
death, 81, 82; attitude to- 
ward Hellenism, 82-84 

Judea, 93, 94, 119, 233 

Judges: scribes as, 200 

Law, the, 153-164; evasions 

of, 193-195 
Laws of cleanness and un- 

cleanness, 186-188 
Laws of prayer, 188-190 
Laws of the Sabbath, 181-185 
Lawyers, See scribes 
Legalism, 4, 5, 71, 96, 180, 

192 
Legislators: scribes as, 200 
Literary honor, 223 
Logos or word, 227, 229 
Lower City, 250, 252 
Lysias, 68, 71, 74, 77 

Maccabean Psalms, 260 
Maccabees I, 68, 95 
Maccabees II, 54, 55> 62 
Maccabees IV, 221 
Maccabeus, 67 
Macharus, 255 
Magnesia: battle of, 53 
Malichus, 127 
Manasseh, 21 

Marriages: mixed, 14-16, 21 
Mariamne, 128, 131, 134-137, 
140, 141 



Mark Antony, 127, 130, 132, 

i35 
Martyrs, 62, 63 
Masada, 130, 131, 255 
Massacres, 58, 59, 106, 117, 

244, 245 
Menelaus, 55-59 
Menzuzah, 191 
Migilloth, or Rolls, 155 
Minister, See Hazan 
Moabites, 73, 99 * 
Modin, 63, 65, 82, 93 
Moses, 154, 158, 160, 166, 220, 

222, 224 
Mount Gerizim, 21, 101 

Nabii or prophets, 155 
Neapolitanus, 242 
Neeman, 204 
Nehemiah: character of, 9, 10; 

return of, 16; building the 

walls of Jerusalem, 16-18; 

organization of Jews, 19, 20; 

later reforms, 20, 21 
Nicolaus, 124 
Nicaso, 21 
Nicanor, 68, 78-80 
Nicanor's gate, 80, 148, 231 
Nicanor's day, 80 

Octavius, 130 

Onias, III, 57 

Onias IV, 57 

Onias: a priest, in, 112 

Oral tradition, 158-164, 180- 

190, 207 
Orpheus, 223 

Papyryon: battle of, 113 
Parmenio, 27 
Passover, 112, 240 
Pentateuch, 154, 155; com- 
mentary on, 222 
Persecution, the, 58-68 
Phannias, 247 
Phasael, 127, 129, 130 
Phasaelis, 144 



INDEX 



279 



Pharisees, 102-106, 202-205 
Pharsalia: battle of, 122 
Philip, 77 

Phylacteries or tephillin, 191 
Plato, 35, 220, 222, 224, 227 
Pompey, 112-120, 121-122 
Prayer, 20, 80; laws of, 188- 

190 
Prophets (or Nabii), 155, 156 
Psalter of Solomon, 224 
Ptolmais, 93 

Ptolraais, the grammarian, 215 
Ptolemy: commandant of Dok, 

97, 98 
Ptolemy, Euergetes, 42, 46 
Ptolemy, Lagus, 37, 42 
Ptolemy, Philadelphia, 44, 46 

Rabi, Jehudah, 161, 162 

Rabbis, See Scribes 

Reading: taught in Jewish 
schools, 168, 169; knowl- 
edge of, 166 

Receiver of alms, 175 

Robe of the high priest, 27, 
133, 235 

Rome, 50, 53, 59; treaties 
with, 81, 89, 96; conquest of 
Judea by, 112-122; influence 
in reign of Herod the Great, 
126, 127, 130-132, 135, 136, 
143, 230, 231; in reign of 
Herod's sons, 232; Judea 
governed by, 233-242; Ju- 
dea's war with, 243-254; Je- 
rusalem burned by, 254-256 

Sabbath: observance, 19, 20, 
60, 61, 64, 117, 131 ; laws of, 
181-185, 192-194, 234 

Sabbatical year, 19, 28, 61, 76, 
98 

Sacrifice, 14, 27, 56, 60, 61, 63, 
112, 243, 255 

Sadducees, 102-104, 206-208 

Salome, 136 

Salutations, 189, 190 



Samaria, 26, 67, 74, 99, 131, 

138, 139, 143 
Samaritans, 21, 26-28, 99-101 
Sanballat the Horonite, 17, 2x 
Sanhedrin, 41, 125, 126, 200, 

204, 234 
Scaurus, 113 
Schools: elementary, 166-169; 

Rabbinical, 12, 158, 169, 199- 

201 
Scribes, 9, 18, 145, 196-202 
Scrolls, 18, 19, 60, 61, 159, 160, 

173 
Sebaste, 143 
Seleucus, 37 
Seleucus IV, 53 
Semi-Jew, see Idumea 
Septuagint, 44-46, 216, 217 
Sermon: a Jewish, 176-178 
Seron, 67, 68 
Sextus Caesar, 126 
Shammai, 126, 201, 202 
Shechem, 99 

Shema, 175, 176, 179, 191 
Shemoneh Esreh, 19, 179 
Sicarii, 239, 249 
Simon II, 42-44 
Simon bar Giora, 249, 250, 

251-255 
Simon ben Shetach, 107, 167 
Simon Maccabeus, 65, 82, 94-97 
Socrates, 29-35, 220, 222 
Song of Solomon, 157 
Sophroniscus, 29 
Sophists, 31 
Sosius, 131 
Stoics, 224, 226, 227 
Straton's Tower, 144 
Sybilline oracles, 30, 223, 224 
Synagogue, 20, 170-179 

Talmud, 162-164 

Taxes, 50, 51, 53, 94, 121, 236 

Temple, 13, 42-44, 60, 61, 71- 

73, 79, H5-I49, 230. 235, 

241, 254 



280 



INDEX 



Temple: Mount, 73, zxz, XX7, 

131, 146, 250, 254 
Tetrach, 128 
Theodorus: tutor of Tiberias, 

215 
Tiberias, 237 
Tithes, 13, 19, 20, 206 
Titus, 249, 250, 252, 253-255 
Tobiah the Ammonite, 17, 20 
Torah, See Law 
Treasury: temple, 41, 54, z2z, 

235, 241 
Treaties, See Rome 
Tribute, 28, 40, 41, 94, 98, Z19 
Triumphs: Roman, 119, 255 
Trypho, 93 

Upper City, 250, 255 



Vespasian, 245, 248, 249 

Walls of Jerusalem, z6-z8, 42, 

77, 251-254 
Wisdom of Solomon, 46, 48, 

221 
Work: prohibited on Sabbath, 

182 
Worship: private, X79 
Worship: emperor, 219, 234, 

238 
Word, See Logos 
Writing: taught in Jewish 

schools, 169 

Zacharias, 248 
Zealots, 236, 246-248 
Zechariah, 13 
Zizith, 191 



